Voter registration data seem to augur ill for Republicans

Things aren’t looking too hot for Clark County Republicans after the secretary of state’s office released its monthly voter registration statistics Friday.

June marked the third straight month in which the number of newly registered nonpartisans (6,512) outpaced that of the GOP (5,191). The biggest jump was among voters 18 to 35.

On top of that, Democrats continued their strong push and registered another 10,000 voters to the party. The party has a 120,000 registered vote edge (398,000 versus 278,000) over Republicans in Southern Nevada.

University of Nevada, Las Vegas political science professor Dan Lee said the rise in nonpartisan registration is part of a national trend that Nevada is finally catching up with.

“Nationally, the views of both parties is pretty negative,” Lee said. “(Voters) are just cynical about their parties getting things done.”

In Colorado, nonpartisan voters (called unaffiliated there) are the largest group of voters, representing over one-third of all registered voters in the state.

Here in Nevada, the group makes up just under 20 percent of the 1.32 million active voter population, up from about 14 percent in 2000, according to the secretary of state’s office.

Aside from being less predictable come election time, Lee said getting the growing number of nonpartisans out to vote has been a struggle for the parties as they tend to vote at a lower rate than their partisan peers.

“It’s easier to mobilize your supporters than to persuade voters,” he said.

A big chunk of the recent nonpartisan registers might be “disaffected Republicans” turned off to the party by the likes of Donald Trump, the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, Lee said.

“It’s certainly not a good thing for Trump,” Lee said. “If he only mobilizes Republican voters, that’s not going to be enough.”

Contact Colton Lochhead at clochhead@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4638. Follow @ColtonLochhead on Twitter.