Cuyahoga County can boast a tiny bump in registered voters as the 2024 presidential election season comes to a close.
As of Nov. 1, there were 893,801 people registered to vote in the county. That’s 4,700 more than in 2020 and 2,200 more than in 2016. It’s a glimmer of electoral growth – albeit a very small one – in a county that has been losing population for 50 years.
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The increase is miniscule, just 0.25% since 2016. But a closer look at the numbers shows a more significant change in the distribution of electoral power across Cuyahoga County over the last eight years.
Cleveland’s predominantly Black neighborhoods on the East Side have lost thousands of registered voters. Meanwhile, registrations have surged among downtown residents. Many suburbs have seen modest gains, but some are losing voters.
Taken alone, the registration numbers don’t tell us why people dropped off the voter rolls. They could have moved, taking their votes to new communities. They could have died. Or the board of elections could have canceled their registration after years of voter inactivity.
The changes do reflect the overall shifts in the county’s population. Many Cleveland neighborhoods are shrinking while just a few – downtown first among them – are booming. Some suburbs have grown and some are losing residents.
Often, when we talk about who shows up to vote in an election, we use voter turnout as our measuring stick. This is the percentage of registered voters who cast ballots.
But in this piece, we’ll look at a different measurement: the total number of registered voters. This number tells us the maximum number of people who could cast a ballot in the unlikely event that 100% of voters show up on Election Day. In a way, the number represents the upper limit of a city’s, ward’s or precinct’s electoral power.
While Cuyahoga County remains strongly Democratic, the geographic distribution of that electoral power is changing.
Cuyahoga County registrations since 2016: falling East Side numbers and a downtown tentpole
From Collinwood to Central to Lee-Harvard, Cleveland’s East Side wards have shrunk in electoral heft. All told, the city has lost about 13,500 registered voters since 2016, most in East Side wards.
Ward 10, which wiggles across the northeast side of town, leads the city in losses. There are almost 2,200 fewer voters in Ward 10 than there were when Donald Trump first appeared on the ballot in 2016.
But for every registered voter that Ward 10 lost, Ward 3 gained one – and then some. The ward that encompasses downtown, Ohio City and Tremont, has grown by 2,600 registrations in the last eight years.
Around 1,000 of those new Ward 3 registrations are located in a single precinct, 3L. That precinct cuts across the heart of downtown Cleveland and includes Playhouse Square and active stretches of Euclid Avenue and East Ninth Street.
The two wards have different demographic profiles. Ward 10 is majority Black and has a median income below the city average. Ward 3, by contrast, is in an economically better position than the city at large, with a median income of $49,000, according to 2019 census data analyzed by the Center for Community Solutions. Around 40% of Ward 3 residents have a bachelor’s degree or higher, well above the city average of 17.5%.
State Rep. Terrence Upchurch’s district includes parts of Ward 10 and Ward 3. He told Signal Cleveland that he saw population decline as a driving reason for the loss of registered voters.
“The East Side in terms of population has just continued to be in decline,” he said. “It’s almost been decimated.”
For example: Two neighborhoods that are partially in Ward 10 – Glenville and St. Clair Superior – lost more than 20% of their populations between 2010 and 2020. Downtown, by contrast, grew by 40%.
Upchurch said that many downtown residents may living there for a time before settling down somewhere else.
“Those folks that live in Collinwood and Glenville and Hough and the Central neighborhood, that are homeowners, that have been there, I think those are the numbers that I really want to focus on increasing,” he said.
Paula Kampf, a Democratic activist in Ohio City, has seen her ward change. New apartment buildings have risen around the home where she’s lived for 25 years. With those buildings come new residents – and new voters.
Other parts of Ward 3 haven’t seen that growth, however. A few Ward 3 precincts have lost voters, including those to the south in the Clark-Fulton and Stockyards neighborhoods.
Kampf couldn’t say exactly why the change was happening. She wondered whether it was tied to the state’s periodic “purges” – when people who have gone years without voting are cut from counties’ registered voter lists.
“That is not the fault of new people moving here, but I think it’s an important question,” she said.
Nora Kelley, another local Democratic activist who’s been working to increase turnout in her West Park neighborhood, said that she saw an economic story in the registration numbers. Places doing better economically also appeared to be gaining voters.
“So much of this speaks to the really incredible impact of economic inequality in our society,” she said.
It remains to be seen whether these changes make much of a difference in the 2024 presidential and senate races. But the shifts have major implications for next year’s municipal elections.
Cleveland City Council must cut two wards to account for the city’s declining population. Because East Side wards have lost the most people, they’re mathematically the most vulnerable to the looming cuts.
Cuyahoga County suburbs gain voters
Cleveland has shed 13,500 registered voters, but the suburbs have gained them by a slightly greater measure. Cuyahoga County suburbs have almost 15,700 more registered voters than they did in 2016.
Westlake, Strongsville, Parma and Beachwood have each gained more than 1,000 registered voters in the last eight years. But some suburbs buck that trend, none more than East Cleveland. The city, which has been losing residents for decades, saw a nearly 2,500-person decline in registered voters since 2016 – or 19% of its registered voter base.
