| Cross-posted at Daily Kos
Today, California's Secretary of State Debra Bowen published the 15-Day Report of Registration, a snapshot of voter information as of the January 22 close of voter registration for February 5th's primary. The news in Bowen's report is nothing short of stunning.
The number of registered California voters has increased by 700,000 since the 2004 primary. During that time, Democratic registration has fallen by .2 of a percentage point, from 43.2% to 43%; Republican registration has fallen 2.3 percentage points, from 35.6% to 32.3%. At the same time, the number of Decline to State voters has increased by 3 percentage points, from 16.4% to 19.4%.
But you know how I said the results of the report were "stunning"? Well, here's the really cool part, as reported by John Myers at Capitol Notes: (emphasis added)
But the even more interesting stat may be that some 240,000 new voters have signed up just since December. The conventional wisdom, of course, is that this could be driven by the high interest in this year's race for the White House.
And if that's true, most folks have signed up to weigh in on the Democratic presidential primary. Today's report shows that for every 1 new Republican voter since December, there were almost 4 new Democratic voters.
[UPDATE]: The California Democratic Party just issued this press release with regard to the SoS's report:
"History is about to be made with either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama and Californians overwhelmingly want to be a part of the excitement as registered Democrats," said Senator Art Torres (Ret.), Chairman of the California Democratic Party.
"Our grassroots around California and the Clinton and Obama campaigns went all out to register Democrats, and we have not seen this level of enthusiasm in a presidential primary in decades," added Torres.
Penny
Online Organizing Director
California Democratic Party |
