Some of the decline in the Democrats is apparently due to independents
"registering" for the Republican Party in New Hampshire. This story
explains how independents who voted for Bush in 2000 were forced to write-in
Kerry when they participated in the REPUBLICAN primary in New Hampshire:
http://www.channelone.com/news/2004/01/29/ap_election_bush_nh/
It seems that independents in New Hampshire who vote in a party primary are
automatically registered with that party, and must change their registration
back to independent if they want to be able to choose which primary they
will vote in the next election.
Kerry received 3,009 votes in the Republican primary (4.4% of the total
primary vote, which is shy of the 10% threshold he needed to win a delegate
to the Republican convention). Other Democrats like Clark and Dean received
more than 1,000 write-in votes. If voters had coordinated, they could have
sent a Democrat delegate to the Republican convention. My choice would have
been Al Sharpton.
http://www.state.nh.us/sos/presprim%202004/rpressum.htm
I find it quite extraordinary that these voters would go to the polls and
vote in such a way that they knew their vote would not count. I guess they
decided that when they were handed a Republican ballot at the polls, they
decided to go ahead and vote, anyway. Maybe someone would like to sue?
-Mike
==================================
Dr. Michael P. McDonald
Assistant Professor
Dept of Public and International Affairs
George Mason University
4400 University Drive - 3F4
Fairfax, VA 22030-4444
Office: 703-993-4191
Fax: 703-993-1399
Efax: 561-431-3190
mmcdon@gmu.edu
http://elections.gmu.edu/
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-election-law_gl@majordomo.lls.edu
[mailto:owner-election-law_gl@majordomo.lls.edu] On Behalf Of
ban@richardwinger.com
Sent: Monday, February 02, 2004 2:57 PM
To: election-law@majordomo.lls.edu
Subject: current voter registration data by party
I have compiled the number of registered voters in
each party, for the 29 states in which people register
into parties on voter registration forms.
Below are the current percentages, and also the
percentages for that same party as of Oct. 2002 in
parentheses. Democrats have declined since 2002 even
though they have the more exciting presidential
primaries this year.
Democratic 42.19% (was 42.68%)
Republican 32.79% (was 32.55%)
Indp & misc 23.15% (was 22.99%)
Constitution .36% (was .36%)
Green .34% (was .31%)
Libertarian .27% (was .23%)
Reform .07% (was .08%)
Natural Law .04% (was .05%)
other party .79% (was .75%)
Most of the "other party" are one-state parties, and
most of them are in New York state. All my current
data is from the period Nov. 2003 to the present,
except that Maine data is from 2002 and Pa. data is
from May 2003.
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it!
http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ps/sb/