New Registrations play an important part of every election cycle. Campaigns can be won or lost based on months-long efforts to build a larger voting base, and aggressive GOTV pushes to get these new voters to turn out and vote.
Those voters who are newly registered also can be missed by an opposing campaign because they don’t have a voting history, weren’t in the voter modeling project, or maybe the campaign wasn’t even aware of the surge in new registrants that had been done on the ground.
In one Northern California district in 2012, a candidate not using PDI had a voter file that had last been updated 35-days out from the election. That sounds like it should be pretty comprehensive, but come Election Day, fully 14% of the voters who cast their ballots had never been in his database. This was a race won by just a couple percentage points – and those 1 in 7 voters were much greater than the final differential.
This year PDI has released a public tool allowing campaigns to see the new voter registration, compare to 2012 and 2010 voter registration surges, and see how the newly registered compare to base voter registration. And there are a ton of surprises for campaigns that take the time to look.
Overall, registration this year has been below 2014 numbers, but ahead of 2010. This makes some sense with a growing population and online voter registration making the process more accessible. The registration is obviously younger, as younger voters are more likely to be registering, and there is a bump in Latino registration compared to the current full voter file. The greatest single partisan shift is an increasing number of voters registering as Independent or Other Minor Party, with those gains coming at the expense of both Democrats and Republicans.
But the Statewide numbers aren’t what we find the most surprising. While registration in most parts of the state has been fairly light and consistent with a gubernatorial election, some districts are breaking that mold – likely due to long, aggressive and well funded voter registration drives. Compare, for example, the statewide registration chart to Assembly District 44, where the 2010 numbers in blue exceeded the 2012 Presidential General Election numbers for 12 of the last 13 weeks.
Or look at SD 14 where the total new registration in 2014 was actually higher than 2012, and three times higher than those voters registered in 2010.
This major registration surge, potentially caused by registration drives on both sides of the political spectrum, could have an incredible impact on the final vote.
New Registrants can be a big part of the final vote, but campaigns cannot maximize the potential benefit in these numbers if they are not using the best data available.