Voter Registrations, Pt 2

Any discussion about the possibility of moving Florida into the Democratic Presidential column in 2008 has to look at the trend that went from a 537 vote loss in 2000 to an almost 381,000 vote loss in 2004.

So I thought I would look at party registrations for voters who have registered to vote since the 2004 presidential election.

It's a very mixed bag.

Statewide, there isn't a lot of change. Through 3/31/2007, there were 23,349 more Democrats registered than Republicans (563,110 to 539,761). However, during this period, there were 534,794 third party/no party registrations. Given the current political climate, it might not be unreasonable to expect that a Democratic candidate could do extremely well with this group, pull in disenchanted voters who went for Bush in 2004 and hold onto those who voted for Kerry. Can that equal 381,000 votes? Perhaps.

New voter registrations certainly do not favor the Democrats in the Panhandle, SW Florida and the counties surrounding Jacksonville. Southeast FLorida continues to be a Democratic stronghold and new registrations are certainly favorable in the North Central and holding their own in the central part of the state.

For those of you who like maps, here's thedata plotted by county. If you click on the map it will open in a larger format. Enjoy.