Daily Sun staff
Registered Republicans continue to outnumber registered Democrats in Gage County, according to statistics released Monday by the Gage County Clerk’s Office.
Nationally, meanwhile, voter registration numbers are up.
After voter registration for the May 13 primary election ended on Friday, figures show that there are 7,982 registered Republicans in Gage County, compared with 5,498 registered Democrats.
In addition, 2,699 people registered as nonpartisan, 153 registered with the Nebraska Party and six registered with the Green Party.
Elsewhere across the nation, voter excitement, always up before a presidential election, is pushing registration through the roof so far this year ” with more than 3.4 million people rushing to join in the historic balloting, according to an Associated Press survey that offers the first national snapshot.
Figures are up for blacks, women and young people. Rural and city. South and North.
Overall, the AP found that nearly one in 66 adult Americans signed up to vote in just the first three months of the year. And in the 21 states that were able to provide comparable data, new registrations have soared about 64 percent from the same three months in the 2004 campaign.
Voters are flocking to the most open election in half a century, inspired to support the first female president, the first black or the oldest ever elected.
Also, the bruising Democratic race has lasted longer than anyone expected, creating a burst of interest in states typically ignored in an election year.
Some Democratic Party leaders bemoan the long battle, with two strong candidates continuing to undercut each other. But there are clear signs that the registration boom is favoring their party, at least for now.
“This could change the face of American politics for decades to come,” said Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, predicting permanent gains for her party. Republicans, concerned at least somewhat for 2008, say these surges come and go over the longer term.
While detailed data are available from only a handful of states, registration seems to be up particularly strongly for blacks and women.
New voters are generally less reliable. So there’s no guarantee this year’s newcomers will stick around in years to come - or even cast ballots in November if their candidate doesn’t make it.
Even if some discouraged new voters drop off, the numbers are striking.
New voter registrations favored Democrats in North Carolina, which holds its primary Tuesday. In the first three months of the year, the number of new Democratic registrants nearly tripled - to 74,590 - from those during the same period of 2004. New Republican registrations were up, too, but they only doubled.
More than 49,558 unaffiliated voters signed up in the Tar Heel state, compared with just 16,858 in the first three months of 2004. The Democratic primary was the obvious draw, with 85 percent of unaffiliated voters who cast early ballots doing so on that ticket.
The overall figures on new registrations were compiled by the AP in a survey of election officials nationwide. Seven states and the District of Columbia were unable to provide statistics, meaning the total number of voters who registered between roughly Jan. 1 and March 31 almost certainly exceeds 3.5 million. One of the seven, North Dakota, does not require voters to register.
In the 21 states that were able to provide comparable figures from the first three months of 2004, only Iowa showed a decline. That state held its first-in-the-nation caucuses on Jan. 3.
Four states provided information about the race of registrants in both 2004 and 2008: Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana and North Carolina. And in each, there was a surge in the registration of black voters. In North Carolina, more than 45,000 blacks signed up to vote in the first three months of 2008, compared with just over 11,000 in the first three months of 2004.
There was also a fourfold rise in black voter registrations in Alabama, while Louisiana and Tennessee saw increases of 64 and 17 percent.
Six states collected voter data by gender in 2008 and 2004, and the new-registration rate among women - who have largely backed Clinton - is up 89 percent in those states, compared with 74 percent for men.
North Carolina officials expect a turnout of around 50 percent in Tuesday’s primary election - double the rate of past primaries. Almost half a million voters cast early ballots, more than half the number who voted in the state’s 2004 primary overall.
In Indiana, which also votes Tuesday, a flood of recent voter applications slowed election systems to a crawl and forced some counties to keep staff working around-the-clock to process the backlog.
The Associated Press contributed to the this report.