Sasha Hupka
Arizona Republic
Independents are once again Arizona’s largest group of registered voters, but political experts hold varying views on what that means for the state’s political identity as it barrels toward a presidential election year.
About 1.45 million Arizonans are independents, or voters not affiliated with a political party officially recognized by the state, per data released by the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office on Friday. That gives them a narrow lead over the state’s 1.44 million registered Republicans.
Arizona also has about 1.26 million registered Democrats, 33,700 registered Libertarians and 8,500 voters registered to the No Labels Party, which was just officially recognized by the state in March.
It’s the second time that independents have led in statewide voter registration numbers. Unaffiliated voters first took the lead from GOP voters in 2014, but were overtaken again by Republicans two years later. From 2018 to 2020, both the Republican and Democratic parties deployed paid efforts to up their voter registration numbers, leaving the independent voting bloc in the dust.
Now, independents are surging again. In June, unaffiliated voters made up about 53% of new voter registrations in the state’s largest county, Maricopa. Independents currently lead Republicans in Maricopa County registrations by about 30,000 voters and lead Democrats by nearly 150,000 voters.
Arizona pollsters and political strategists generally agree that the shift is unlikely to dramatically change the elections landscape in Arizona. But they had varying takes on exactly what the change means for the state’s political identity.
“There’s a lot of varying opinions and also just misperceptions that go throughout our society (of) what an independent voter is,” said Democratic strategist D.J. Quinlan of Radar Strategies.
Are unaffiliated voters actually independent voters?
