I don’t often focus on party registration as an important statistic. I think there are several more important factors when analyzing elections, especially when trying to determine trends and make predictions. Party registration if anything seems to be a lagging indicator; trends seem to show up after actual voting patterns appear. That’s why Democrats are still so strong in partisan registration in places like Kentucky and West Virginia, while Republicans still dominate much of the Philadelphia suburbs even though voters there overall tend to go Democratic. Similarly in Oregon, Washington County still had a Republican registration advantage for years after it began voting Democratic, and Coos County just flipped from plurality Democratic to plurality Republican even though it stopped voting Democratic for president and governor by the turn of the century.
Still I think it is still an interesting thing to keep track of, especially now while the effects of Oregon’s new automatic voter registration program are beginning to register. The program by default registers new voters as not affiliated with a party, but they’re sent a notice of how they can decline to register or choose a party. The vast majority, something like 85%, if I recall correctly, have not taken action and been registered as unaffiliated. Of those who’ve chosen a party something like half have chosen to be Democrats, with the remainder split by Republicans and other parties.
Unaffiliated Voter Growth
The places with big growth in unaffiliated voters are interesting. They seem to be mostly more Republican and rural areas, far from the college campuses and urban areas where Democrats have focused registration drives in the past. The of the 7 counties with the highest growth in unaffiliated voters, where they increased by 3-4 points in their share of the overall registered voter pool, Mitt Romney won all 7 and John McCain won 6. Those counties are Jefferson (1), Marion (2), Morrow (3), Douglas (4), Malheur (5) Umatilla (6), and Lake (7) counties. Marion County, home of most of Salem, is the biggest in population. Lake and Douglas counties are both very rural, Republican counties, and both very heavily white. The other counties, though, are among the least white counties in the state. Malheur, Marion, Morrow, and Umatilla counties all have large Hispanic/Latino populations, and Jefferson County has both a significant Hispanic/Latino population and also a large Native American population.
Looking a bit more closely at communities in the state, using state House districts, we see that the districts that have gained the most unaffiliated voters since 2012 are also those with the highest Hispanic/Latino populations. The district with the highest growth was HD-22 in Woodburn and parts of Salem, which is the only Hispanic/Latino majority district in the state. The runner-up districts include HD-21, neighboring in Salem, HD-29 which includes majority Hispanic/Latino Cornelius and southwest Hillsboro, HD-47 in outer east Portland, and HD-57 which includes large Hispanic/Latino populations in Morrow and Umatilla counties. While the counties with the highest growth were mainly rural Republican ones, only HD-57 of these is a predominantly rural, Republican-held district.
Because Oregon House districts are nested in Senate districts (two house districts compose one senate district), SD-11 based in Woodburn and Salem had the highest growth of unaffiliated voters. SD-11’s unaffiliated voters grew from 22.3% of registered voters in March of 2012 to 27.65% in March of 2016, surpassing Republicans who fell from nearly 30% to less than 26%. In all of the aforementioned state House districts unaffiliated voters have also surpassed one of the major parties.
In two districts in Eastern Oregon unaffiliated voters now outnumber Democrats, while in many in Western Oregon they now outnumber Republicans. That includes several that Republicans won in 2010 but have failed to win since. It will be interesting to see how the new unaffiliated voters, who seem to be disproportionately nonwhite, affect future elections in the state.
Regions/Counties
Since 2004 the area that for my purposes comprises the Portland metro area, Multnomah, Washington, Clackamas, and Columbia counties, has gone from having 43.5% of all of the state’s registered voters to 45.5%. Overall and in all but Columbia, the smallest county, the region is showing gains for Democrats.
Since 2004 Multnomah County, home of most of Portland, has gone from having 19% to over 20% of the state’s registered voters, and the numbers have shifted dramatically in favor of Democrats. In 2004 Democrats outnumbered Republicans by about 94,000 registered voters there, but now we do by over 184,000. Even unaffiliated voters outnumber Republicans by about 109,000 registered unaffiliated voters to about 63,000 Republicans. Multnomah County has a bit less than 10% of the state’s Republican voters, but nearly 28% of the state’s Democrats, and nearly 21% of the unaffilated registered voters. While Democrats have added over 70,000 voters since 2004, Republicans have lost about 19,000. Multnomah County has gone from overwhelmingly Democratic to even more overwhelmingly Democratic, just as it has in actual election results.
The next most populous county in the state, after Multnomah, is Washington County, and has over 13% of the state’s voters. It includes most of Portland’s suburbs and by some measures is the most diverse county in the state. Despite Multnomah and Washington being among the fastest growing counties in the state, both post declines in registered Republicans since 2004. Washington County shows a loss of Republicans from over 89,000 in 2004 to less than 84,000 in 2016. Democrats grew by nearly 37,000 to over 118,000, surpassing Republican numbers, and now Democrats outnumber them by nearly 35,000 in Washington County. Republicans only slightly outnumber unaffiliated voters.
Clackamas County is the third largest in the state by population, and in the Portland metro area it holds the remainder of the suburbs. It has over 10% of the state’s registered voters, but is traditionally a swing county and remains so still. Democrats surpassed Republicans in registration since 2004 but still have only a narrow advantage. We’ve gone from about a 3,100 registered voter deficit to having about an 11,200 voter advantage over Republicans today, with nearly 90,000 Democrats to over 78,000 Republicans.
Columbia County is the only one in the metro are where Democratic numbers are declining, and is one of the only counties Democrats still win that appears to be trending Republican. With barely over 1% of the state’s total registered voters, though, it is of far less consequence than the larger counties. To the right you can see the margins in percentage points and trends in the counties, with negative numbers representing a Republican lead and positive numbers a Democratic lead. Columbia County used to be dominated by Democrats, and we do still tend to win it, but our margins have decreased, and John Kitzhaber lost it in both of his recent gubernatorial campaigns in 2010 and 2014.
Looking further south in the Willamette Valley in Marion County, the home of the state capitol, Democrats have nearly closed the gap after many years of Republican dominance. in 2004 Republicans had an edge of over 7,000 registered voters, in 2008 it dropped to under 5,000, in 2012 to less than 2,000, and now it is barely over 400 out of over 156,000 registered voters. Democrats continued to gain while Republicans have hovered in the 55-56,000 range. Marion County has about 7% of the state’s registered voters, and tends to go Republican, though we won it in the 2006 gubernatorial race and 2008 presidential race, losing it fairly narrowly in 2012. I would not be surprised to see it go Democratic this year, given the narrowed gap between parties, and the antagonism Hispanic/Latino voters are feeling from the Republican presidential nominee.
Democratic prospects are no worse in Lane County, home of the last big city in the valley, Eugene. Lane County has about 9.5% of the state’s registered voters. Again, Republicans have stagnated while Democrats have grown. The Democratic margin has just about doubled from less than 19,000 registered voters to over 37,000. While Republicans dropped by about 1,700, unaffiliated added about 9,000 and Democrats increased by abut 17,000. This has translated to a change from Democrats having a 10 point margin over Republicans to an 18 point margin, going from a 42-32% lead to a 44-26% lead.
Looking at the rest of the counties in the Willamette Valley, Linn County is the only other one where Democrats are losing ground. Republican margins have shrunk in Polk and Yamhill counties from 8 and 9 points to only about 4 points, while the Democratic margin in Benton County has gone from 6 points in 2004 to 19 in 2016. The Republican margin has grown from about 4 points to 7 points in Linn County, moving from a deficit of about 2,000 to about 4,800 voters in March 2016. At the same time, though, the registration in Benton, Polk, and Yamhill counties overall has gone from an over 4,000 lead of Republicans over Democrats to a Democratic lead of over 5,500. Altogether the six counties in the rest of the valley, including Marion and Lane, have about 26% of the state’s registered voters.
Jackson County is the next biggest in the state, home of the cities of Medford and Ashland. It is down on the southern border with California, and is the population hub of Southern Oregon. It has about 5.5% of the registered voters in the state. It’s a Republican county generally, though it voted for President Obama in 2008 very narrowly. Since March 2004 the Republican registration advantage has shrunk from about 8,600 to only about 3,300 in March 2016. In that period Republicans lost about 1,200 voters while Democrats gained over 4,000, to a current Republican advantage of about 44,300 to 41,000.
Southern Oregon has about 12% of the state’s registered voters, and all of the counties there are pretty solidly Republican. Despite the increasing margins in Klamath and Douglas counties, Republican gains overall in Southern Oregon are more from sagging Democratic numbers than Republican gains. Among the three counties other than Jackson, Republicans have only gained about 600 voters since 2004, while Democrats have lost over 6,000. So overall, given the change in Jackson County as well, both parties have lost voters, with Democrats just losing a bit more outside of Jackson than we’ve gained in it.
The last region in western Oregon is the coast, and I’ve yet neglected 5 counties that are predominantly on the coast (Douglas and Lane counties are on the coast but most of their populations aren’t). For the most part the trends are barely perceptible if anything, though the two most populous counties, Coos and Lincoln, have opposing trends. Coos, once one of the most Democratic counties in the state, for the first time now has a slim Republican registration advantage. As I mentioned at the beginning of the post, though, this has lagged far behind actual voting patterns, as the county hasn’t voted for a Democrat for president or governor since the 1990s. At the same time, though, it has continued to support down ballot Democrats, voting for Democratic
Congressman Peter DeFazio consistently, continuing to elect Democrats to the legislature, and in 2012 and 2014 supporting Democrats for every partisan statewide office except president and governor. If anything the county’s Republican trend seems to have stalled even as our registration advantage vanished. In fact neither of the recently Republican counties on the South Coast, Coos or Curry, seems to be moving further away from us in actual voting in the last couple elections. Meanwhile for the most part our strength on the Central and North Coast has persisted, with Lincoln appearing to have a Democratic trend, and Tillamook and Clatsop lacking a significant trend. As these counties only have about 5% of the state’s voters though, when combined, even overall they have little impact statewide.
Having looked at everything west of the Cascades so far, what’s left is east, and that is a very different story in Central Oregon than the rest of Eastern Oregon. Central Oregon is the only part of the East that’s really gaining in population significantly, and in fact until the automatic registration program began the rest of the East had been losing voters. And while the big population center in Central Oregon, Deschutes County (home of Bend) is rapidly growing and showing Democratic gains, the rest of the east has been growing more Republican as it becomes less important in the statewide vote. While the number of Republicans has been fairly stagnant, the number of Democrats has declined significantly.
Eastern Oregon has about 12% or so of the state’s registered voters, but more than a third of that is in Deschutes County, which has about 4.7% of the state’s registered voters. In raw numbers the Republican advantage has dropped from nearly 8,000 in 2004 to only about 3,600 this March, as Democratic growth has outpaced Republican growth in this most rapidly growing county in the state. But with strong unaffiliated and Independent Party growth, the Republican advantage in terms of percentage of all registered voters has declined from about a 43-32% advantage in 2004 to a mere 36-32% advantage this March. Just since 2012 we cut their margin by over 1,500, which could indicate part of why in 2014 we had a strong overperformance — U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley easily carried the county and Kitzhaber, while losing it, lost it by much less than normal. Both won Bend itself by wide margins. While President Obama never won Deschutes County, this could be another indication that it has strongly shifted our way since 2012.
Looking at the trends across the county only three really stand out, and that includes Deschutes. In Wasco County the Democratic margin had held firm at about 5 points until this year, likely impacted mainly by the addition of unaffiliated voters from the automatic registration program. That leaves Hood River County, where Democrats have had large gains. We have gone from about a 4,000-3,700 lead on Republicans to about a 5,200-3,000 lead, going from a 5 point advantage to an 18 point advantage, and Republicans now trail unaffiliateds in registration there. But in the rest of the region there is a uniform Republican trend as Democratic registration has dropped. Still, the Republican net registration advantage over all of this region, including Deschutes County, is only a bit over 34,000 today, a bit less than the Democratic advantage in Washington County alone. The Democratic net increase over Republicans in Multnomah County alone since 2004 is over 90,000. Republican gains, or Democratic losses in Eastern Oregon are much more than outweighed by Democratic gains in the west.
State House Districts
Looking at legislative districts, Democrats outnumber Republicans in nearly 2/3 of the state house districts. Democrats outnumber Republicans in every Democratic-held district in the state House (Democrats hold 35/60 districts), plus three Republican-held districts. Democrats are also more concentrated in Democratic districts than Republicans. The districts with the biggest Republican advantages are HD-56 based in Klamath Falls at a 26 point Republican advantage (49-23%) and HD-60 in the southeast corner of the state at a 29 point advantage (50-21%). Meanwhile, many Democratic districts exceed those margins. HD-16 in Corvallis has a 28 point Democratic registration advantage. HD-08 in Eugene has a 31 point Democratic registration advantage. Districts
36, 45, and 46 in Portland have Democratic registration advantages between 44 and 47 points for Democrats, while districts 42, 43, and 44 have Democratic advantages of between 50 and 60 points. In HD-43 Democrats outnumber Republicans 65.4% to 5%, or nearly 28,000 to barely 2,600. The maps depicting this above and at right only color code the districts up to 25+ point advantages, so it greatly under-represents Democratic advantages in these districts.
The narrowest Democratic advantages in Democratic-held districts are in HD-09, based in Coos Bay/North Bend on the Coast, and HD-20, based in Salem, Monmouth, and Independence. They are just 4.5 and 2.5 point advantages, and moving in opposite directions. Since 2012 HD-09’s Democratic advantage dropped by 1.5 points, while HD-20 actually flipped from a Republican advantage of 38-37.8% to a Democratic advantage of 37-34.5%, while we picked the district up in 2014. This closely reflects their actual partisanship in voting, as HD-09 is about R+1 as measured by Cook PVI and HD-20 is about D+0. HD-20 is traditionally Republican, but finally flipped in 2014 very narrowly. HD-09 has given us double digit wins in 2012 and 2014 despite looking vulnerable.
The Republican-held districts with Democratic registration advantages are HD-37 in West Linn and Tualatin, HD-52 in Sandy and Hood River, and HD-54 in Bend. HD-37 went from about a 0.6 point Democratic margin in 2012 to about a 4.4 point margin in 2016, showing a real gain in Democrats as well as a significant loss among Republicans. President Obama carried this district by nearly 54-46% in 2012, making it about D+2. HD-52 went from about a 5.1 to a 5.4 point Democratic advantage, a nearly imperceptible Democratic trend. President Obama won this district by just under 53-47% in 2012, making it about D+1. the Democratic advantage in HD-54 nearly doubled from about 4.5 points in 2012 to 9 points in 2016. In 2012 Barack Obama won the district by nearly 56-44%, making it about D+4. We won HD-2 and HD-54 in 2008 but lost them in 2010 and have failed to win them back since. HD-52 has given Republican Mark Johnson only narrow victories, though, while HD-54 has given Republicans bigger wins. HD-37 has been consistently held by Republicans for many years, though they only held it by a few hundred votes in 2010 when it was last open.
Meanwhile, in two Republican-held districts southwest of Portland, Republican advantages have shrunk to bare pluralities. In HD-24 based in McMinnville Republicans went from a 37-35% advantage in 2012 to a less than 36-35% advantage in 2016. In HD-26 in Sherwood and Wilsonville Republicans have gone from a nearly 5 point advantage in 2012 to a less than 2 point advantage today. Mitt Romney narrowly won the 24th 51-49%, making it about R+3, while President Obama narrowly won the 26th 50.3-49.7%, making it less than R+2. These districts have occasionally had close results when we’ve contested them, but they’ve held fir for Republicans so far.
Overall only two legislative districts in the state, the two on the Idaho border, have seen an actual increase in Republican share of all registered voters since 2012. Seventeen districts have seen a real increase in Democratic share. The remainder of “trends” represent one party losing less of its share than the other to increases in unaffiliated and Independent gains. On the Senate side there were zero Republican districts with real gains, while seven of the thirty districts in the Senate had real gains for Democrats.
State Senate Districts
Speaking of the state Senate, ten districts have Republican registration advantages, while twenty have Democratic advantages. The biggest Republican advantage is in SD-28, based in Klamath Falls but stretching from Jackson to Crook counties in Central and Southern Oregon, at a 46-24% Republican advantage, or a 22 point one. Democrats have a 45-23% advantage in SD-17, based in Beaverton and Northwest Portland, a 44-20% advantage in SD-24, based in outer east Portland, a 58-11% advantage in SD-23 on Portland’s east side, a 59-11% advantage in SD-21 in inner Southeast Portland, and a 62-6% advantage, or 56 points, in SD-22 in North and Northeast Portland. Democrats have a registration advantage in two Republican held districts, while Republicans have a less than 1 point advantage in two more of their districts, and a less than 5 point advantage in two more, leaving them with only six districts where they have a strong registration advantage of 5 points or more. Democrats have an advantage of at least about 7.5 points in every district we hold in the Senate (18/30), and at least about a 10 point advantage in exactly half of the Senate districts.In both of the Senate districts we flipped in 2014 (SD-08 and SD-15) Democrats have about a 10-12 point registration advantage.
Of our districts, SD-03 based in Medford and Ashland has the narrowest advantage at about 7.5 points, which is a significant improvement from 2012 when Democrats had just a bit over a 5 point advantage. This is a district President Obama won in 2012 by about 55-45%, making it about D+3. We have about an 8 point advantage in SD-05 on the coast, which stretches from Coos Bay in the south up to Tillamook, but that is down from a 9 point advantage in 2012. President Obama carried this district about 54-46% in 2012, making it about D+2. Democrats have about a 9 point advantage in registration in SD-16, which is in the northwest corner of the state, down from a 10 point advantage in 2012. This district was also about 54-46% for President Obama in 2012. Despite the closeness of registration numbers, and downward trends for Democrats in SD-05 and SD-16, we’ve held all of these seats in recent elections, and of those wins only SD-03 in 2010 was a close victory.
Democrats also have slim advantages in two Republican-held Senate districts, SD-20 in Clackamas County and SD-26 based in Hood River, northeastern Clackamas County, and outer Southeast Portland. SD-20 in 2012 had a 38-36% Democratic advantage, while is now 36-34%, with just a 0.02 point net shift towards Democrats, so it looks white on the trends district map above. This is a district Mitt Romney won 51-49% in 2012, making it about R+3. In SD-26 Democrats went from bout a 38-33% advantage in 2012 to about a 37-30% advantage in March of this year, gaining about a net 1.4 points on them. This is a district President Obama carried about 53.5-46.5% in 2012. While we kept SD-20 reasonably close in 2014, SD-26 easily re-elected Senator Chuck Thomsen, who is perceived as a moderate.
Republicans have a less than 1 point registration advantage in two Senate districts, SD-10 based in South and West Salem, and SD-27 based in Bend and Redmond. They have about a 0.9 point advantage, a lead of about 36-35%, in SD-10, where in 2012 they had a more than 2 point advantage. There was an even bigger shift in SD-27, where Republicans are down to a 34-33.6% advantage now, having had a 37-33.6% advantage in 2012. Both of these districts were carried about 51-49% by Mitt Romney in 2012, but SD-27 is the only district that John Kitzhaber actually won in the 2014 gubernatorial race than President Obama had lost in 2012, because of his much stronger than normal performance in Deschutes County. We haven’t been able to make SD-27 competitive lately, though it is up again this year. SD-10 was fairly competitive in the Democratic wave of 2006, but since then Senator Jackie Winters has been invulnerable.
Congressional Districts
Looking at congressional districts we can see where this is going based on county and legislative district trends. In the 1st district, based in Washington County and the northwest corner of the state and represented by Democrat Suzanne Bonamici of Beaverton, the Republican numbers are stagnant. They have slipped by about 700-800 voters since 2012. Unaffiliated ranks have swelled by about 20,000 in that time, Independent ranks by about 7,000. Democrats are up about 15,000 to over 176,000, leading Republicans about 40-28% overall, slightly up from nearly 41-31% in 2012.
In the 2nd district, which includes Eastern and some of Southern Oregon, and represented by Republican Greg Walden of Hood River, only the unaffiliated and Independent numbers have dramatically increased. Democrats are up about 800 since 2012, Republicans are up about 2,800, but unaffiliateds are up over 15,000 and Independents over 8,000. Still, the Republican edge has been barely reduced, moving from a 41-31% advantage to a 39-30% advantage. This is likely because the biggest counties are Jackson and Deschutes, both of which are showing Democratic gains, while Greg Walden’s own Hood River County has become strongly Democratic.
Oregon’s 3rd district is based in Portland and represented by Democrat Earl Blumenauer of Portland. In the last 4 years the number of Republicans dropped by about 2,600, while the number of unaffiliated voters grew by 21,000 and Independents by nearly 6,000. Democratic ranks grew by over 25,000, though, swelling to over 244,000. Democrats went from a 52-19% advantage to a 51-16% advantage, while unaffiliated voters, who outnumber Republicans, went from 22% to 24% since 2012. According to census estimates this district has grown faster than any other so far this decade, so it is likely to be able to afford to drop a good number of Democrats into other districts.
Oregon’s 4th district is in the southwestern corner of the state, including college towns of Corvallis and Eugene, and is represented by Democrat Peter DeFazio of Springfield. Republican numbers are again stagnant there, with them down literally 37 voters to a little over 143,000 since 2012. Democrats are up 4,400 to a total of about 173,000, while unaffiliateds are up about 15,500 and Independents are up about 7,000. Overall the Democratic advantage has barely budged from about 40-34% in 2012 to 38-32% in 2016, with just more unaffiliated and Independent Party voters weighing both Democratic and Republican numbers down.
All parties have had some growth in the 5th district, an oddly-shaped district stretching from the Clackamas County suburbs, through Salem, and west to the Coast. It’s represented by Democrat Kurt Schrader of Canby, and is the most closely-divided district in the state. Republicans are up nearly 2,800 since 2012 to about 145,000, but Democrats are up over 10,000 to nearly 162,000. Unaffiliated voters had the biggest gain at nearly 20,000, up to about 99,000, while Independents are up about 7,500 since 2012. The Democratic advantage has shifted from 38-36% to 37-33%, a decent shift since it used to have more Republicans than Democrats prior to 2008. This district has seen the strongest growth of unaffiliated voters since 2012, moving up about 2.6 points in the overall registered voter pool to nearly 23%.
Democrats are not gaining everywhere, with most rural areas trending Republican, mainly due to declining numbers of Democrats rather than increases for Republicans. However, it looks like every significant urban area of the state, even down to a city of 35,000 like Grants Pass and 32,000 in McMinnville, are showing at worst no trend, but most are moving our way and some strongly. Bend, Medford, Albany, Portland, Salem, Eugene, all of them look to be moving our way in registration. Now as I stated at the beginning of this post that isn’t necessarily a big indication of things to come in future elections, but it is still another data point worth at least considering, and the outcome from the new automatic registration program is definitely worth looking at. We’ll see if and how those newly voters registered voters actually vote this year.
Another development is that 111,000 Oregon voters changed party to vote in a partisan primary this year, and 76% or about 85,000 of them became Democrats. This is a record number of party-switchers in advance of a primary. I think most of that is not reflected in the numbers yet that are available to me, because the latest I have are March numbers while the registration deadline was in late April. I can’t wait to see how these new voters change the numbers!