Democrats signing up more new voters
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-10-19 09:00

The Democrats appear to be gaining the upper hand in the battle to sign up new voters in the all-important swing states, an Associated Press analysis suggests.

The AP analysis of the most up-to-date figures from across the country found that, in every state where complete data is available, the Democrats have registered more new voters than Republicans. They have the edge in Arizona, Iowa, New Mexico, Nevada and New Hampshire.

Only in Florida is the story different. Registration tallies from more than half the counties show that the Republicans and the Democrats are virtually tied in the race to increase their share of voters in the state that decided the presidential election four years ago. In those counties, the Republicans have signed up just a few thousand more.

As for the two other big prizes among the swing states — Pennsylvania and Ohio — Pennsylvania's numbers are too scant to draw any conclusions, and Ohio does not register voters by party.

"We're living politics right now, everywhere you turn," said Kevin Glat, auditor in Burleigh County, N.D. "It was such a close race four years ago that people are finally coming to the realization that every vote does count."

Now, the real test is whether the parties can get these newly registered voters to the polls. New voters are often less likely than others to actually cast a ballot.

"It's the end-all, be-all. Nothing matters unless they show up to vote," said Mindy Tucker Fletcher with the Florida GOP.

With 2000 as a warning and the latest polls showing this election very close in eight critical states, the latest registration numbers could be pivotal.

In New Hampshire, a state that George W. Bush won by 7,211 votes in 2000 — the Democrats have signed up 6,814 more new voters than the Republicans have. The Democratic rolls rose by 3.7 percent, compared with a scant 0.2 percent for the GOP.

In Iowa, Democrats have registered 42,074 more of their supporters than the GOP — this in a state Bush lost by just over 4,000 votes.

In New Mexico, the Republicans increased their share of voters, growing by 9 percent while Democrats grew 7.7 percent. But the Democrats still added nearly 10,000 more voters. The voter rolls grew overall at 7.6 percent in Arizona, with Democrats seeing a 7.5 percent increase and Republicans 6.1 percent.

States are seeing a boom in registration that is swamping election offices with paperwork.

Nevada's Washoe and Clark counties, which account for 85 percent of the state's population, reported 231,688 new voters, a jump of more than a quarter from just a few months ago. The rise is more than three times the number that signed up in the months before the 2000 election.

Washington state reported a record 46 percent increase in new registrations this year compared to 2000; Ohio saw a 10 percent rise in the past few months.

But it is not a big Election Day turnout overall that matters to the two parties — it is a big turnout of their supporters. So each side has combined time-demanding door-knocking with expensive computer mapping to get their voters registered.

The Republicans built a network of volunteers with close supervision from White House strategists. The Democrats are relying on an array of community-based groups and a separate organization, America Coming Together, that has raised over $100 million.

Florida is once again emerging as one of the most critical of swing states, combining a big 27 electoral votes with polls showing a close split among voters. With 38 counties providing registration rolls so far, the picture is incomplete. But those counties, a mix of Democratic-leaning and Republican-leaning counties, offer a fairly representative glimpse at the state overall.

Those counties had 633,132 new voters sign up this year, or an 11.7 percent increase. Democrats saw their numbers rise by 191,544, or 8.2 percent. Republicans saw 194,348 new voters sign up, for a 9.2 percent rise.

The analysis does not provide a complete picture of voter registration because some states had not finished counting and others only report on a county basis. The analysis sought a fair sampling of counties to reflect each state's larger political demographics.

Voters do not register by party in Ohio and Michigan. Others, because of backlogs or same-day registration, could not provide enough data to judge: Maine, Minnesota, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

Pennsylvania, for which data from only six counties were available, showed Democrats may be building a bigger base there. The results, however, relied on counties more Democrat-leaning than the state overall.

The data showed the Democrats' numbers growing by 8 percent. The Republicans' numbers grew only 5.1 percent.

Independent voters are also playing a big factor. Their numbers are growing faster than either party's supporters in several states, including Arizona, New Hampshire and New Mexico.

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