Today is the last day to register to vote in advance of the November 4th General Election. It is also the day, historically, with the highest day of new registrations as community groups, county registrars and the Secretary of State usually make a final last push to get voters to register.
As the following chart shows, these registration surges are greatest in Presidential years, with a peak of nearly a half-million new registrations on one day in 2008. The online registrations, allowed for the first time in 2012, were more than half of that deadline’s total.
The last 14 days of registration show that the surge in Presidential years can result in a million or more new voters in presidential years, and as many as 350,000 voters in gubernatorial years.
Armed with this historical data, one would project that about 100,000 new voters will be registered today for the coming election, representing about half of the 200,000 or so voters that register in the last two weeks. And, as always, Political Data will have these new registrants on our client systems, directly from each of the 58 counties, as soon as it is available.