By: Jeremy Duda | Arizona Capitol Times
A trend that began after Arizona started letting independents vote in partisan primaries reached fruition this month when they officially became the largest voting bloc in the state, outnumbering registered Republicans by a few thousand.
Secretary of State Ken Bennett on Monday announced that Arizona has 1,134,243 voters registered with no party preference, commonly referred to as independent. That pushes the state’s dominant political party, the Republicans, to second place with 1,130,170, while Democrats lag behind at 960,701 registered voters.
Independent registration jumped by more than 10,000 since January, the last time the Secretary of State’s Office tabulated voter registration numbers. Their rise has come at the expense of the Republican and Democratic parties, both of which lost voters.
