Voter registration trends in Arizona could sway the 2024 election

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PHOENIX ‒ When Joe Biden won Arizona in 2020, it was the first time in a generation a Democrat claimed the state at the presidential level.

It was a narrow victory – 10,457 votes – that on the surface would seem repeatable by Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024.

But shifts in voter registration in the intervening four years could affect that razor-thin margin and influence the outcome of the election between Harris and former President Donald Trump this fall.

“Republicans have continued to maintain their numerical dominance over Democrats, despite the fact that Republican candidates have been losing a lot of their elections,” said Samara Klar, a professor at University of Arizona School of Government and Public Policy who studies political attitudes and behavior.

There are 4.3 million registered voters in Arizona heading into the 2024 election, a 6% increase from just before the 2020 election. That growth pales in comparison with the jump between 2016 and 2020, when the rolls grew by 23%, according to an analysis of voter registration data by the Arizona Republic, part of the USA TODAY network.

The Republic’s analysis is drawn from voter data collected by L2, a research company that compiles demographic information on registered voters across the nation.

Republicans have registration edge The Arizona Democratic Party is losing ground, Republicans are holding steady, and a growing share of voters are registering with no party affiliation.

Harris did not change that dynamic when she became the Democratic presidential nominee. In fact, more Republicans registered to vote after Harris' nomination than Democrats.

Nor did Harris inspire a greater than usual number of women relative to men to register, which makes the overturning of Roe v. Wade the only event in recent history that created a brief spike in registration among Arizona women.

The Republican advantage over Democrats has grown since 2020, putting the party at about the same footing that it had in 2016 when Trump was elected. While the Republican party has maintained about 35% of all registered voters, the Democrats went from 33% in 2020 to 29% today.

Nonpartisan registration grew from about 25% to 29%.

That’s welcome news for Trump, who lost the 2020 election by less than a percentage point in Arizona.

A net change like this "toward Republicans in voter registration is a huge difference in terms of what the composition of the electorate will be this year,” said Jeff Glassburner, a pollster at Peak Insights who has worked on GOP campaigns in Arizona.

The Democratic voter registration deficit is a worrying trend for those on the left, including Democratic political strategist Stacy Pearson. It comes even as Democrats have won both Senate seats, the governor’s office, the attorney general’s office and the secretary of state’s office during the Trump era.

“I'm literally waking up at 3 in the morning trying to figure out: Are these just folks frustrated with the two-party system that have registered as independents? Are they disaffected Democrats who moved from California that registered as independents?” Pearson said.

As fewer new voters registered Democrat, more existing Democrats dropped their party affiliation than Republicans, according to an analysis of voter registration data by the Republic.

About 136,000 Democrats dropped their party affiliation, compared with 103,000 Republicans who did the same. Many of them just became nonpartisan: about 84,000 Democrats and 67,000 Republicans did.

But 37,000 Democrats since President Joe Biden was elected have switched their party affiliation to Republican, while only about 19,000 Republicans became Democrats.

With Democrats at a partisan disadvantage, Harris needs to put her focus on people who register without party affiliation, Pearson said. The vice president is working to appeal to them and to Republicans who are tired of Trump, highlighting Republican endorsers like former Sen. Jeff Flake and building a coalition within the Mormon church.

“The math is the math, and for Democrats statewide to be successful, there has to be a larger portion of independents voting for Democrats to cover that loss,” Pearson said.

Republicans attribute their partisan advantage in part to Biden’s unpopularity here. The Democratic president was trailing Trump in polls in Arizona and across the country before he dropped out of the race; voters said they were wary of his age and frustrated by the state of the economy and inflation.

“The Republican registration advantage is probably a counter to Biden's numbers being unpopular,” said Chad Heywood, former executive director of the Arizona Republican Party. “Anytime you look at the incumbent president, there's usually a reaction to voter sentiment that you see in registration data.”

Gen Z gets ready to cast first ballots More than 187,000 young people are registered to vote in their first presidential election, according to a Republic analysis.

That’s about 37,000 fewer first-timers than there were for the 2020 election.

Arizona polls show Harris outperforming Trump among voters in that age group.

“Voters under the age of 30, they're voting for Harris at higher rates than Trump. That just gets bigger as you go younger, especially younger women,” Klar said. “Younger women are particularly likely to support Harris, but they are largely independent."

Independent voters in Arizona tend to be younger and include more Hispanic voters, Klar said. That could be because voters feel alienated by the major parties and the polarization in politics.

“If you are 18 years old and you don’t feel like either party represents you, you're much more likely to just identify as an independent and then maybe vote for the candidate that best represents your views,” Klar said.

Hispanic voter share keeps growing Hispanic voters are steadily on the rise, according to an Arizona Republic analysis. The group made up only 18.5% of registered voters in 2016. That percentage grew to 20% in 2020 and now stands at 21.6% in 2024. There was no notable change among Black people registered to vote in Arizona.

Harris leads Trump among Hispanic voters, but a recent poll from "The New York Times" and Siena College found the vice president losing some support among that group in the past month or so.

“If you look at national trends, Republicans have done better over the last couple of election cycles with Hispanic voters, and so I don't know that it's a boon to Democrats in the way that it might have been in the past,” Heywood said.

Indeed, the Democrats are losing ground among Hispanic people, just as they are with the rest of the population. One in 3 voters who switched from Democrat to Republican from 2020 to the present were Hispanic.

In 2020, 47% of Hispanic voters were registered Democrats, compared with 16% registered Republicans.

Today, only 40% of Hispanic voters are registered Democrats and 18% are registered Republicans.

Nonpartisan affiliation has become more popular: In 2020, 31% were nonpartisan, and today 37% are nonpartisan.

Enrique Davis Mazlum, Arizona director of the Latino political group UnidosUS Action Fund, noted that Hispanic voters are a young voting bloc in the state.

“It's a very young voter group,” Mazlum said. “It's a really big chunk of Latinos that will be voting for the first time.”

Don’t blame California transplants Arizona’s population has increased significantly over the past decade, and Phoenix is one of the fastest-growing cities in the country. But the influence of voters moving to Arizona from other states can be overblown, Klar said.

Arizona did not grow enough to get another congressional seat in the last round of redistricting, for example. And when Klar surveys the state, she asks voters when they moved here.

“That is a very common theory, that it's all these newcomers that are changing the political landscape of the state. I don't actually see a lot of evidence that it has to do with newcomers,” Klar said.

“A bigger factor is really changes within Arizona,” Klar said. “The political trends have more to do with the people inside of Arizona than the people who are moving here.”

The state’s red, rural counties are losing population as more people concentrate in the Phoenix suburbs and in Maricopa County in general, according to Klar.

Maricopa County is the most populous county in Arizona. It makes up about 60% of Arizona’s registered voters. The county has nearly 2.6 million registered voters. The partisan makeup of voters in the county is 35% Republican, 32% independent and 29% Democratic.

The chairs of the state Republican and Democratic parties each declined interviews about the shifting voter registration landscape. Arizona GOP chair Gina Swoboda said in a written statement that “our momentum is undeniable,” although unaffiliated voters outpaced both parties.

“Arizona Republicans have been out-registering Democrats since 2020, and we’re not slowing down,” Swoboda said.

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