Silver State bucks trend tracked by Silver

Although non-partisan registration has grown in Nevada since 2008, the state's overwhelming Democratic surge has gone counter to a trend in many states.

This afternnon, statistics guru Nate Silver of The New York Times put out a series of Tweets about trends in the 15 states that track voter registration every month. Most recent Tweet at top:

fivethirtyeight

Among the swing states on that list (NV+CO+FL+IA+PA+NC): Dems +238,652 voter regs since 7/1; GOP +154,724; indies +281,825.

 





And in last couple of months, Dem registrations are mediocre, but GOP numbers worse. Both parties losing ground to indies.

 





Since 2008, the Dem share of voter registrations is down slightly. But all gains among independents/others, not GOP.

 



 




The big story is that there's a major surge in voters registering as independent, unaffiliated, or with minor parties.

 





15 states track monthly data on voter registration by party. In those states since 7/1, 34% of new voters are Dems, 20% GOP, 46% other.

But Nevada does not fit so neatly into this statistical box. Here's why:

Nevada has indeed seen an increase in non-major-party registrations. But since July 1, the real growth has been in Democratic Party numbers. Here are the facts:

In 2012, the major parties make up 78 percent of Nevada's electorate (non-partisans are 16.7 percent); in 2010 at the general election, that number was 79 percent (non-partisans were 15.6 percent); and in 2008 at the general, it was just under 80 percent (non-partisans were 15 percent).

So the major parties here have lost about 2 percent off their share of the electorate since Barack Obama was first elected while non-partisan registration has increased slightly less than that amount.

But since July, which is the time frame Silver measured, Nevada bucks the trend he tracked. To wit:

 

·         47 percent are Democrats  (+13 percent compared to the combined 15 states)

·         32 percent are other (-14 percent compared to the combined 15 states)

·         21 percent are Republicans (+1 percent compared to the combined 15 states)

In Nevada, new Democratic registrations are outperforming the 15 state numbers by a net of 12 percent in the same time frame.

That is a stark trend for Republicans here, unless, of course, they really are hiding a bunch of their voters among the new non-partisan voters, as they claim. If not, as I argue and detail in the Premium Content portion of the site, the math becomes very difficult.

 

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