Democratic voter edge in Oklahoma continues to fade
After Tuesday’s elections, it’s likely that Republicans for the first time will occupy every one of Oklahoma’s congressional seats and statewide offices. And the Republican Party won’t have to wait much longer to break more new ground by becoming the largest voting bloc in the state.
The State Election Board added 114,103 voters to the rolls between Jan. 15 and Oct. 12 — the latter the deadline to register for Tuesday’s general election. Of those, 67,368 signed up as Republicans, 25,123 registered as independents and only 21,465 registered as Democrats.
The Democratic Party now has about 69,000 more registered voters than does the GOP — but that’s a far cry from the 455,000-voter edge it held in January 2000.Since then, Democrats have seen their rolls in Oklahoma shrink by about 224,000 while Republicans have added roughly 160,000.
Clearly it’s not a matter of if the GOP will assume the top spot, but when.
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Comments
This is not really something to be happy about. The Democratic minority in this state in terms of voting is down to about 40%, so it has completely flipped from when the Democrats were the majority party. One party rule is not good. It leaves those with certain beliefs and outlooks essentially unrepresented in state government. Some of this seems to be the result of the extreme dislike of Barack Obama here, which apparently reulted in the banishing of most officeholders with a “D” after their names.
These numbers surprise me, especially that democrats have 69,000 more registered voters than the GOP.