Friday, October 27, 2006

SOTS: 42,000 New Voters

According to the Secretary of the State's office, more than 42,000 new voters have registered between the August 8th primary and now. Here are the numbers as of October 27th:
D – 14,726 (35%)
R - 6,770 (16.1%)
U - 20,355 (48.4%)
MINOR - 225 (0.5%)

That's a lot of new Democrats and unaffiliated voters. More than 60,000 people have registered to vote over the last six months.

If you want to register, you still have time! The deadline to register by mail has passed, but you can still register in person at your town hall until 8:00pm on Tuesday, October 31st.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Any idea on comparisons to prior years on new voter registrations? '04 or '02? New registrations leading up to an election?

42,000 is a lot. But for all the hype over Kerry vs Bush, I don't think turnout was any higher that year (in CT) than in Gore vs Bush.

Genghis Conn said...

This did exceed their goal of 35k by a comfortable margin. I'm led to believe that this is a very good number. Might be hard to compare previous years, because of the dates of the sample (from the primary until now).

Anonymous said...

Is that NET new voters? Or just new registrations... possibly related to normal turnover from people moving? I wonder if 18yr olds are registering more than usual... with Iraq, voting may be more on their mind than usual.

Anonymous said...

Is that NET new voters? Or just new registrations... possibly related to normal turnover from people moving? I wonder if 18yr olds are registering more than usual... with Iraq, voting may be more on their mind than usual.

Anonymous said...

How many citizens of CT became eligible to vote this year by virtue of attaining their eighteenth birthday since the last election?

Anonymous said...

all you hear in republican circles is talk about this amazing job the ct gop state central committee did registering new voters. facts say otherwise. joke.

Anonymous said...

1:20... interesting point. GC, if you put new registrations in percentage terms, do they break down along the same percentages that already existed? (either on Aug 8 or May 8.)

Just wondering if those were the general registration numbers.

They look like what I expect to be the normal numbers... 50% U, 33% D & 17% R. (D:R=2:1; with over half of CT actually being Unaffiliated).

Aldon Hynes said...

For some interesting information on voter turnout, check out this fact sheet from the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Education.

Various fun fact to note: “the turnout rate among 18 to 29 year olds in Connecticut ranked 43rd overall” and “there are an estimated 417,000 young people in Connecticut who are eligible to vote in U.S. elections.” The definition of ‘young people’ appears to be ages 18 through 29. Based on this, I would guess that there are approximately 35,000 newly eligible 18 year olds.

Based on this, 42,000 new voters, added into the surge in new voters before the primary seems impressive to me, especially since I suspect (but don’t have the statistics), that the percentage of 18 year olds that actually register doesn’t come close to 100%.

For turnout rates, in 2004 44% of young voters voted. In 2002, it was 23% and in 2000 in was 45%. In 1994, it was 24%.

Anonymous said...

Wow, Zoni got killed in his hometown paper.

Good call by his campaign on that mailer!

Anonymous said...

The registration numbers are good. With repsect to party affiliation, the Democrat number 35% is consistent with statewide party affiliation. The Republican number at 16% is about 8% below statewide average. The unaffiliated voter total of 48% is high. It seems clear that Republicans are losing ground, but the people are not switching to the Democrat party, but registering as Us.

Anonymous said...

Anon 1:20, what talk? I haven't heard any talk.

Anonymous said...

Architect: why would anyone talk around you?