PDI has just completed the process of obtaining and posting the 15-day close for each county, and in it we find some surprising datapoints.
The late surge of voter registration in past election years was documented in a prior blog posting. As that writeup discussed, we can see a correlation between the high turnout in presidential elections, and a massive wave of new registrations in the last two weeks, including a peak on the final deadline. A similar, but smaller surge has been seen in the 2006 and 2010 elections.
The voter file has few ways to really see “voter enthusiasm” but clearly, the number of voters rushing to get in their new or updated registration so they can vote in November is a good one. In 2004, 2008 and 2012 we saw million voter surges in the last two weeks, and several hundred thousand on the last day alone. In Gubernatorial elections, the trend has been lower, but still with 250-350,000 in the last two weeks, and upwards of 100,000 on the final day.
This year? Not nearly as much. A massive depression in Deadline Day registrations, just 180,000 in the last two weeks.
And on the last day, when we would expect to see 100,000 new registrations, particularly with the ease of registering online, we saw just 53,000.
The full picture of new registrants statewide and within each district can be seen in our New Registration Tracker, which is being updated with the final new registrations this afternoon.