Democrats hold on to 1 million voter registration advantage

Democrats picked up 956 new voters statewide in October while Republicans lost 1,185, narrowly increasing New Jersey’s Democratic voter registration edge to 1,072,433, according to registration data released today by the state Division of Elections.

That brings the state into Election Day with 2,577,698 Democrats (39.3%), 1,505,265 Republicans (22.9%) and 2,396,910 unaffiliated voters (36.5%).

This stopped a months-long trend of Republicans outpacing Democrats in voter registration, something that had not happened since before the 2009 election.

An addition 81,695 voters have pro-actively joined one of seven independent parties.  There are 21,244 Libertarian, 11,736 Green Party members, and 7,789 Socialists in the state.

New Jersey gained a total of 14,336 voters over the last 31 days. During the same time period, the number of unaffiliated voters dropped by 14,042.

Inexplicably, the number of voters who opted to register as members of the Natural Law Party increased by 46 and the number of registered Reform Party members went up by 15.  Both of those parties have been defunct for 17 years.

In 2001, the last time Republicans had a governor and majorities in both houses of the Legislature, 55% of New Jersey voters were not affiliated with either political party.  In two decades, years, that number has dropped to 37%.

Democrats made up 25% of the voters in 2001, while 19.5% were registered as Republicans.

Despite the blueness of New Jersey, Republicans have held the governor’s office for 24 of the last 38 years.  Democrats have not re-elected a governor since 1977 and Republicans have done so three times since then.

But Republicans have not elected a U.S. Senator since 1972; every state but Hawaii has elected a GOP U.S. Senator since then.  And Republicans have not carried New Jersey in a presidential election since 1988.