While there has been a great deal of media attention paid to registration gains made by the Democrat Party in Arizona over the last few months, analysis of the changes in voter registration for the first six months of 2007 paints a different picture.  The Republican edge over the Democrats actually grew from 147,038 to 151,985, an increase of nearly 5,000 voters.  Moreover, GOP registration increased in eight Arizona counties while it decreased in seven.  By comparison, DEM registration increased in only four counties while it decreased in eleven.  These numbers reflect new registrations as well as voters who are taken off the rolls for being inactive, moving, or dying.

Of course, the real growth belonged to Independent voters, which registered increases in every county except Navajo.  In fact, the GOP gains are not so much the result of gaining voters faster than the DEMs so much as it is losing them at a slower rate.  For the first six months of the year the GOP lost 2.0% of its voters statewide while the DEMs lost 2.9%.  Independents grew by 9.8%.

The data also shows that many of the GOP defections occurred when the Senate began consideration of the “comprehensive immigration reform bill” that was labeled as amnesty.  It is clear that many of those folks who said that they were leaving the GOP as a result of that bill did exactly that, switching their registration to Independent.

One final factor in these decreases for both the GOP and the DEMs has been the mass exodus of active voters in Navajo and Apache county since the 2004 elections.  Each party lost 25-30% of its registered voters in Apache county while Navajo county lost nearly 40% of all voters, including more than 50% of its independents.  These two counties represented one-third of the GOP’s total losses and nearly two-thirds of the DEM’s total losses.