Voter registration up, but no one knows how it will affect turnout

By Peter Slevin and Dan Keating
The Washington Post

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Neither party has gained a significant registration advantage in such hard-fought states as Florida, Colorado, Nevada, New Hampshire or New Mexico, a Washington Post study shows. The strongest gains for one party belong to Democrats in Pennsylvania and Iowa.

Still, advocates and analysts said the unprecedented efforts by political campaigns and independent groups leave them better placed and better funded than ever to get new voters to the polls in what is expected to be a very close presidential election.

"It's a sign that these organizations are warming up for the main event, which is turnout," said Donald Green, a political-science professor at Yale. "In this race, which is so close, if a campaign registers a person and knows where to find that person, they will do whatever they can to get them to vote."

Each side is claiming success, but important details remain unknown in the frantic race to the finish. Registration figures are incomplete. Statistics are not kept by party affiliation in Ohio or in such critical states as Wisconsin and Minnesota, where the major parties and their proxies continue to wage a fierce fight and voters are permitted to register on Election Day.

Experts also caution that voter drives do not automatically translate into election results.

A review of the most recent registration figures shows:

• In Iowa, Democrats have registered four voters for every new Republican voter since 2000. Since this year's caucuses, Democrats have outregistered Republicans by 9 to 1, closing the GOP lead in registration statewide to about 8,000.

• In New Mexico and Colorado, Republicans have outregistered Democrats by about 1 percentage point each. In freshly competitive Colorado, Democrats have beaten Republicans in this year's totals, but remain behind when the past four years of registration are taken together.

• In Florida, Republicans have registered slightly more voters than Democrats have. Rolls have grown by more than 1 million since the 2000 election in the state that President Bush won by 537 votes. But nearly half of the new registrations have come from less predictable independents and small-party loyalists.

• In Nevada, there is a 1 percent increase in the other direction, with Democrats overtaking Republicans for the statewide registration lead. As in other states, the group of registrants who gave no major-party affiliation grew far faster, adding 28,400 names.
 
• In New Hampshire, Democrats made up some ground, but they continue to lag behind Republicans in statewide registration by 40,000 voters. In the eight months leading up to the 2000 vote, more voters registered than in the same period this year.

Terry Nelson, national political director of the Bush-Cheney campaign, said Republicans are counting on a disciplined registration drive to yield votes for Bush. He said the GOP has registered 3.4 million voters nationwide since January 2003, paying particular attention to past voters who have moved.

"The Republican National Committee has an exceptional voter file," Nelson said. "Overall, we feel pretty good. If you compare registration numbers, we've made good advances."

On the Democratic side, nonprofit organizations are registering voters. America Coming Together, the best-funded, has focused its $125 million budget on four battleground states where its workers report registering 366,000 voters.

Steve Rosenthal, the group's director, said, "In Florida, it has been pretty much toe to toe, we think, but in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Iowa, the folks on our side have totally cleaned their clock."

Pennsylvania will not complete its files until the last week of October, but a survey of major counties shows Democratic efforts have paid off.

In Philadelphia, more than 35,000 Democrats have been added to the rolls since 2000, while Republicans have dropped by more than 22,000, elections officials said. Democrats also gained in the suburban counties of Bucks, Delaware, Chester and Montgomery.

Strategists think the candidate who takes two of three among Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio will win the White House. Yet assessing the Ohio registration drive is difficult because the state does not include party affiliation on its forms.

Interest is intense, however. State voting chief Chris Abbruzzese said more than 500,000 voters have joined the Ohio rolls since the March primary, pushing the statewide total above 7.7 million.

In Wisconsin, where Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry has a small lead in recent polls, voter registration is up by at least 200,000 this year, estimates Kevin Kennedy, the state elections chief. He says the rise is being driven by the high stakes and close race as much as by activist organizations.

"The municipal clerks are hearing from people who have been gone from the country for 20 years and they want to vote," Kennedy said.

Still, appraising the registration drives is a dicey business, cautions Curtis Gans, director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate.

Gans, noting that "registration doesn't necessarily speak to turnout," said voter rolls grew nationally in 1996 and 1998, largely because of motor voter laws, but turnout was down in both years. In 2000 and 2002, by contrast, registration was down but turnout was up.

With polls in so many states within the margin of error, Frank Newport, editor of the Gallup poll, said, "Only a fool right now would begin to say this state's going one way or another."