In the weeks since kicking off her campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris has surpassed former President Donald Trump in polls in several battleground states, though in almost every case within the margin of error. The race is tight, and another sign of it getting tighter is a small surge in voter registrations since Harris took over the Democratic nomination.
Arizona is a state with registered voters split roughly into thirds. After a short decline into second place, Republicans are back in the lead with 1.43 million registered voters. Democrats are on the other end with 1.2 million. Those not registered to any political party are in the middle with 1.36 million registered voters.
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Since the start of the year, Republicans are the only group to add new registrations. They are up 17,000. Today there are 20,000 fewer registered Democrats and 40,000 fewer registered to no party. A decline in registrations is not unexpected as people relocate or re-register.
The recent and unprecedented switch from President Joe Biden to VP Kamala Harris at the top of the Democratic ticket is breathing life into Democratic registration figures. An ABC15 analysis using Maricopa County’s real-time data over time found that in the 38 days prior to Biden’s exit, Republicans were outregistering Democrats by almost two to one. Between June 13 and July 21, Maricopa recorded 14,101 Republican registrations and 8,322 Democratic ones. From July 21 to August 28, Democrats outpaced Republicans 9,508 to 7,928.
The same effect occurred in Pima County as well. They also maintain a weekly registration statistics page and this data was compared with the most recent officially published statistics. There were few changes to registrations between April and July in Arizona’s second-largest county. From July to August, however, Democrats had a net gain of 4,453 registrations to 915 Republicans — an over four to one advantage.
Being registered to vote 28 days prior to an election is a requirement to vote in that election. While registering with a party is the best indicator of voting intention, this is by no means a perfect indicator.
