I last looked at voter registration based on data from before the 2010 election, when more people had just registered to vote. It's probably a good idea to revisit those numbers again, now that the Board of Elections has removed people who hadn't voted in a long time or whose mailing addresses bounced. Both major parties lost a few voters, while minor party results are more mixed.
| Party | Number (Oct 2010) | Number (May 2011) | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blank (Independent) | 1795 | 1783 | -12 |
| Conservative | 66 | 70 | +4 |
| Democratic | 3345 | 3285 | -60 |
| Green | 61 | 58 | -3 |
| Independence | 403 | 407 | +4 |
| Liberal | 35 | 32 | -3 |
| Libertarian | 1 | 5 | +4 |
| Other | 17 | 11 | -6 |
| Republican | 2617 | 2565 | -52 |
| Right-to-Life | 15 | 13 | -2 |
| Working Families | 30 | 26 | -4 |
| Total | 8385 | 8255 | -130 |
Slightly more Democrats disappeared than Republicans, likely because Democrats residents still seem to be less permanently planted here. (I'm kind of surprised that losses to the two parties were that similar.) Libertarians who shifted to the Republicans so they could vote for Ron Paul in the primary may have returned to the Libertarian line - and likely get to switch again - or maybe those are just new Libertarian voters.
I'd heard from a few people that they were considering switching to the Green Party now that it had official ballot status again (because of Howie Hawkins getting more than 50,000 votes in the 2010 Governor's race). However, I don't see any sign of that in these numbers. The Green Party hasn't been a force in Dryden politics to the best of my knowledge.
Posted by simon at May 24, 2011 12:15 PM in politics (local)
Well, percentagewise, more Republican voters disappeared (a hair under 20%) than Democratic voters (a hair under 18%). That's close enough that it looks more like population decline, or at least decline in registered votership, than like party shift. I'd say the shifts in numbers on the other party lines are so small as to be statistically irrelevant. Even with huge percentage shifts like one voter to five, the sample size is so tiny that you're not getting useful data.