[EL] CA Republicans MIGHT (or might not) be outnumbered by "No Party Preference"

[Eric McGhee]

Regardless whether we’re actually at the tipping point, the trends are most definitely in that direction.  Republican registration in CA has been dropping off a cliff in the last 10 years after decades of only a very gradual decline.  (See the first graph in this briefing piece I did for PPIC:  http://www.ppic.org/publication/californias-future-political-landscape/).  In fact, in the last official report of registration—which came out before the roll-out of the new registration system—GOP and no party preference was separated by just 28,649 people.  That’s rounding error in a state of 19 million registered voters.  And GOP registration rates among the youngest registrants are in the teens, suggesting we haven’t seen the bottom yet.  To be fair, a lot of these no party preference registrants lean toward the GOP, and higher GOP turnout compensates for some of that decline.  But still.

As far as the data issue is concerned,  my understanding is that the initial batch of registrations sent from DMV was immediately flagged and corrected, and that party preference has been accurately coded in all the new registrations since.  So it seems unlikely to me that the new system is driving Paul’s result.

Of course, nothing is official until we get the official numbers. But if we haven’t hit the crossover point now, it’s coming real soon.  It’s even more inevitable than the Warriors beating the Cavs.

From: Law-election [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Douglas Johnson
Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2018 9:37 AM
To: 'Rick Hasen' <rhasen at law.uci.edu>; 'Election Law Listserv' <law-election at uci.edu>
Subject: Re: [EL] CA Republicans MIGHT (or might not) be outnumbered by "No Party Preference"

FYI, be careful about relying on the registration counts from California, especially whether the ‘No Party Preference’ voters exceed Republican voters yet. The state’s new automatic registration system has been malfunctioning: voters who are already registered but who update their voter registration data at the DMV (with a new address, changing party, etc.) apparently gets registered both with the newly-updated information and again, as a 2nd registered voter, with the same info except listed as a “no party preference” voter.

The LA Times has the details: http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-motor-voter-registrations-errors-20180524-story.html<http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-motor-voter-registrations-errors-20180524-story.html>

I have not been able to find any information on this in a quick search of the Secretary of State’s website. If anyone knows of the official explanation, or statistics on how many of these issues exist and how many have been cleaned up already, please share!

-          Doug

Douglas Johnson, Ph.D.
Fellow, Rose Institute of State and Local Government
at Claremont McKenna College
douglas.johnson at cmc.edu<mailto:douglas.johnson at cmc.edu>
direct: 310-200-2058



From: Law-election <law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu<mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu>> On Behalf Of Rick Hasen
Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2018 8:23 AM
To: Election Law Listserv <law-election at uci.edu<mailto:law-election at uci.edu>>
Subject: [EL] ELB News and Commentary 5/30/18




“Independent voters now outnumber Republicans in California”<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=99237>
Posted on May 30, 2018 8:09 am<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=99237> by Rick Hasen<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

SacBee reports.<http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article212139534.html>
[Share]<https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=http%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D99237&title=%E2%80%9CIndependent%20voters%20now%20outnumber%20Republicans%20in%20California%E2%80%9D>
Posted in Uncategorized<http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1>


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