Voter registration surges in Georgia, North Carolina

Spurred by competitive primaries and hopes that their states might be in play come November, voters are registering in record numbers in Georgia and North Carolina.

Georgia has grown the most: an astounding 300,000 new voters have been added to the rolls since January 2008, putting the total number of active registrants at 4.7 million. To put that in context:

The bump is significant, said Charles Bullock, a University of Georgia political scientist. As a comparison, he pointed out that there were 500,000 names added to the active voting rolls in the three years between the presidential election in 2004 and Jan. 1 of this year. "That is more than a 20 percent increase."

Overall, new registrations have favored Democrats and African-Americans -- although registration is up across the board, leaving the electorate looking only slightly different than past elections. For example, 1.3 million African-Americans are registered in Georgia, up from 1.2 million in 2006, nudging up the black share of the electorate from 27% to 28% in two years.

North Carolina's number of registered voters has also grown in 2008, although not as much as Georgia. According to N.C. State Board of Election statistics, just over 203,000 new voters have registered since January.

Like Georgia, new registrations have favored Democratic, independent and African-American voters. African-American voters have gone from 20.1% to 20.7% of the N.C. electorate in 2008. By party, Democrats have gone from 44.8% to 45.3%, and unaffiliated voters from 20.9% to 21.4% since January.

Those gains have been at the expense of Republicans, who went from being 34.3% of N.C. voters in January to 33.3% by the end of June -- a one-point drop.

Labels: african-american voters, Election 2008, Georgia, N.C. Coalition for Verified Voting, north carolina, voter registration