I update our voter registration changes page every Monday. Here are this week’s changes:
- Democrats: -2,827
- Republicans: -3,320
- Libertarians: -34
- Unaffiliated: -1,351
Here are a couple of notes from this week’s update.
The biennial voter registration “purge” is almost over.
North Carolina’s biennial voter registration list maintenance, in which county boards of elections remove inactive registrations, started with Bladen County in early December. Most counties conducted their maintenance over the following few weeks, but there have been a couple of laggards. New Hanover just completed its maintenance last week with a net loss of 2,895 Democrats, 2,470 Republicans, and 3,336 unaffiliated registrations.
That leaves Perquimans as the only county not to have completed its list maintenance.
Here is an overview of list maintenance and why it is not a “purge.”
The Republican registration bleed off continues
The well-publicized drop in Republican voter registrations after the January 6 Capital Hill riots has affected North Carolina as well with around 6,000 voters dropping their Republican registrations in the weeks following the riot.
That trend continued this week. Not including New Hanover County, which, as previously noted, did its biennial list maintenance last week, there was a net drop of 850 Republican registrations last week. During that time there was a net decline of only 68 Democrats and a net increase of 1,985 unaffiliated registrations.
(In addition to biennial list maintenance, voter registrations are removed periodically when county elections officials received notice that a registered voter has moved out of the county, died, or been convicted of a felony.)
While the drop in Republican registrations is small, is always better for a party to be gaining registrations rather than losing them.