1. In Idaho, independents may affiliate on election day. Idaho also permits election day registration. It sounds like in this case that neighbor Tom was registered as an independent. Neighbor Tom may or may not be a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, or may not even exist. His supposed list had candidates from different legislative districts. The blogger, Dave Oliveria, may just have constructed the story so he could take a dig at Rod Beck.

   Before 2011, Idaho did not have partisan registration, and the law was constructed so voters did not have to register their partisan affiliation until they voted in a primary, the first of which was May 2012. Unless one panicked, there would be no reason to re-register before the primary (in which only 26% of registered voters voted in). The SOS did not even begin reporting partisan registration until November 2013, when independents outnumbered Republicans 440K:240K.

   During the 2014 primary season there was a 46K increase in Republican, and 43K decline in independents. The three minor parties: Democratic, Libertarians, and Constitution also increased some. But this change did not show up completely until July 2014, indicating that it was mostly election-day affiliations. By July 2014, independents outnumbered Republicans 396K:285K.

   During the remainder of 2014 there was a small amount of growth in registrations, mostly partisan, but even slightly among independents. This would be driven by voters registering to vote in the 2014 (non-presidential election). But there are not that many voters who aren’t registered who would register to vote then.

   During the purge following the 2014 election, independents declined by 7.3%, while partisans continued to increase. You can’t purge a voter unless you know that he has moved or died. If you send mail to a voter and it comes back you have to wait two more elections without them voting before they can be purged. So most of those purged after the 2014 election, had last voted in 2010 or earlier, when there had been no partisan registration. The reason they didn’t switch to a party, was mostly because they no longer lived in Idaho. Everyone who had a partisan registration had changed it after 2010, and probably had voted in 2012 or 2014. After the purge, independents held a 363K:295K advantage over Republicans.

   The April 2016 registration showed a sharp increase in Republican registration and a sharp drop in independent registration. This corresponded to the presidential preference primary. The Democrats did not have a presidential primary. The timing indicates that the changes occurred on election day, when 41K independents affiliated with the Republican Party, and another 20K new voters affiliated with the Republican Party.

   While some of the switches from independent to Republican may have been crypto-Democrats like apocryphal neighbor Tom, it was more likely just voters who were voting in a primary for the first time. Turnout for the presidential primary was higher than in 2014, and substantially higher than the May regular primary, even though there were only Republican and Constitution presidential primaries then.

   There will probably be some more switches from Independent to Republican in the report over the next month. But this will probably be small since most of such switches happened in March. There will likely be some more purges at the end of the year.

   Incidentally, Libertarian registration declined by 10% between March and April. These were probably voters who thought they could vote in the Republican Primary and were unable to, but went ahead and switched so that they could vote in future primaries.

   From November 2013 to May 2016:

   Rep 32.4% 47.9%
   Dem 7.6 9.6
   Lbt 0.4 0.5
   Con 0.2 0.3
   Ind 59.4 41.7

   The independent share declined by 17.7%, with 15.5% moving to the GOP, and 2.0% to the Democrats.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.