BOISE — The Ada County Clerk’s office released data on Thursday, showing the number of people who registered to vote for the midterm election from January 2018 to October 10, 2018.
Ada County elections director David Levine says there were 31,000 new voter registrations during that time frame.
“What you can basically see is that over the last couple of months, there's a real uptick in registrations and one of the biggest reasons is the increase in online voter registration,” Levine said.
The county has been promoting online registration, and by all accounts, it appears to be working.
“There have been a couple of real clear trends and among them is more people are doing online voter registration and you're seeing increases among women, among older voters and you're seeing increases among some younger voters,” Levine said.
Roughly half of the new voters are millennials.
“They're just either coming of age to vote or are the ones more likely to move here for school or work,” said Dr. Jaclyn Kettler, Boise State assistant political science professor. “It looks like about 40 percent is Republican, which makes sense. We lean Republican as a state, but we're seeing a good number of Democrats as well, at least in Ada County, so it's not dramatically unbalanced.”
Twenty-six percent of the new registrations are Democratic, according to the Ada County Clerk’s Office. Thirty-three percent is unaffiliated.
KTVB asked if the percentage of unaffiliated voters is high.
“It depends, some people may be in public service, or journalists who don’t feel comfortable sharing their party identity and so that's a way for them to still participate, but don’t have that record,” Dr. Kettler said. “While other people may think they don’t really align with either party, but of course, they want to vote and participate.”
Fifty-two percent of the new voters are also women, according to the Clerk’s office.
“A lot of scholars are interested in trying to find out why women turn out to vote at a higher rate,” Dr. Kettler said. “Some think that maybe there's a bigger feeling of civic duty among women or that there are issues close to home that they feel they need to turn out.”
Based on the numbers, KTVB asked if this mid-term election has the makings to be historic.
“There are a number of factors in place here that lend itself to a surging interest in this election,” Levine said. “It's objective, there is an open gubernatorial race. The fact is there are some propositions that are bringing up a certain amount of passion.”