PHOENIX (AP) - Independents have surpassed Republicans as the largest voter bloc in traditionally red Arizona for the first time after years of growth, confirming what many have known for years - a growing number of voters don’t want to be associated with either major political party.
Of the 3.25 million registered voters in the state, nearly 35 percent are now independents, said Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett, who announced the change in a registration report released Monday based on March 1 data from 15 county recorders. Republicans fell just behind, and Democrats have about 29 percent of registered voters.
Twenty years ago, about 12 percent of registered voters were independents, but that number has moved steadily upward. Meanwhile, the number of Republicans has dropped from about 45 percent to just below 35 percent, and Democrats have gone from about 42 percent to about 29 percent.
The rise in Arizona independents mirrors a national trend.
“I don’t think that today’s announcement comes as a surprise to most people,” Bennett said.
Both Republicans and Democrats have been losing voters to the independent category for the past two decades.
“I think it’s because voters become more and more disenchanted with the idea of just following a political philosophy of a particular party and they’re more focused on what is the vision and the record and the plan of individual candidates,” said Bennett, a Republican who is running in the August primary for governor.
Political consultants said the numbers show disaffected Republicans and Democrats are choosing to ditch the party label.
“It is rarely cool to be a member of either major party - one party or the other, or sometimes both, finds themselves sometimes out of favor,” said Constantin Querard, a consultant who is running campaigns for 23 GOP state lawmakers.
He says independents are made up of conservatives and liberals unhappy with their respective parties, people disenchanted with both parties and people truly independent in their voting habits.
Querard said the GOP comes out on the winning end of the shift, because he believes independents tend to support most of the GOP platform, especially fiscal responsibility and small government.
Democratic consultant Rodd McLeod agreed about the reasons for the shift but not the party that benefits.
“People are registering as independents because they’re fed up with both parties,” said McLeod, who has worked on campaigns for U.S. Reps. Kyrsten Sinema and Ron Barber.
But McLeod said Democrats are likely to come out the winners from the ongoing shift because young people more often register independent and vote Democratic.
He pointed to the Arizona Republican Party’s recent censure of U.S. Sen. John McCain over his willingness to work across party lines and the bill passed by lawmakers shielding businesses that deny service to gays from discrimination lawsuits as divisive efforts that have hurt the GOP and turned off younger voters.
Bennett said that although independents now make up a longer part of the electorate, their participation in the process hasn’t caught up.
In Arizona, independents can choose to vote in one party’s primary, but they rarely do so. Just about 10 percent normally participate, he said, compared with 60 to 70 percent of registered party members.
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