Without Obama-McCain money, voter registration sags in 'flyover' states
Voter registration has soared in swing states this year, as you may have noticed from all the media attention to same. It's hardly surprising, though, since that's where the McCain-Palin and Obama-Biden campaigns are fighting each other the hardest.
But voter registration has sagged or stagnated in many states not considered competitive, according to a new study.
The report, released Wednesday by the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, found that while registration has increased in nearly all of the crucial sta
tes targeted by the campaigns, it has not increased in nearly half the uncontested states.
The campaigns usually don't give those "flyover" states nearly as many resources to register voters as they do swing states. And that's now showing.
In South Dakota (which has voted for a Republican presidential candidate in every election since 1964), the number of registered voters has dropped 5% since 2004, the study found.
In New York, which will almost certainly go Democratic blue, registration numbers slipped 2% over the last two years.
On the flip side, 14 of the 15 most-contested states have expanded voter registration since 2004. Nevada, a swing state where Barack Obama's campaign has pushed especially hard to register voters, has seen the biggest surge. Nearly 30% more voters are registered there than at this time in 2004.
Significantly, the study also found that more Democrats than Republicans registered in targeted states.
-- Kate Linthicum
But, hey, Republican or Democrat, you can still get instant alerts of every new Ticket item flashed to your cellphone free by registering here.
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.
Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
Johanna Neuman is a veteran Washington correspondent for both The Los Angeles Times and USA Today, having covered presidents and politics as far back as Ronald Reagan. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., she authored a book on media and foreign policy, “Lights, Camera, Wars.” Most recently she was co-author of the 
Subscribe to this Blog
