Final primary registration numbers

Final primary registration numbers

By David Royse

The News Service of Florida

    THE CAPITAL, TALLAHASSEE, FL — Just fewer than 4.6 million Democrats and about 4.1 million Republicans are registered to vote in Florida’s Aug. 14 primary, according to final registration figures from the Division of Elections.

    Registration for those wanting to cast a ballot in the primary closed July 16, but official figures weren’t tallied until late last week. The book closing statistics also show just under 2.4 million Florida voters registered with no party affiliation.

    The only other significant parties in terms of numbers are the Independent Party of Florida, with 258,968 voters and the Independence Party of Florida with 55,945. The Libertarian Party has 17,708 voters and the Green Party 5,622.

    While Democrats have been out-registering Republicans in recent months, and lead the GOP in numbers of registered voters, the current registration figures also show some long-term trends that are interesting.

Backing up conventional wisdom, registration for the Democratic Party in Florida peaked in 2008 before the election of Barack Obama. Democrats numbered nearly 4.9 million in the state that year, but that figure dropped off, sinking to 4.61 million by the 2010 election, down to the current figure of 4,581,056.

     By contrast, Republicans have largely held steady for a few years. As of book closing for this year’s primary, there were 4,137,890 registered Republicans in Florida, nearly the same as in 2008, when there were 4,106,743 GOP voters in the state.

     No party affiliation voters, or NPAs, and “other” parties have seen a spike, particularly when looking at the full last decade.

     Election officials say going into this year’s primary there are 2,385,323 no party voters. They won’t be able to vote in the primary elections in most cases.

     Counting the minor parties in addition to the NPAs, there are just over 2.7 million voters who aren’t Democrats or Republicans. That’s up from 2.5 million in 2008, about 2.2 million in 2004 and just 1.7 million “other” candidates a decade ago.