Minor party voters may determine who wins in Oregon

[nosmokes]

While I think this is great news and I hope the trend continues because I don't se any other way of breaking the corporate duopoly that chokes the government right now and ultimately allows for the corporations to control everything because all anyone is interested in is getting re-elected, I do hope y'all at the rank & file level of the Democratic Party are paying attention and willing to hold the party chiefs accountable.

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original-registerguard



Minor parties, nonaffiliated voters to play larger role in future elections Nonaffiliated and minor party voters may determine who wins in Oregon

By Mark Brown

The Register-Guard


Although Oregon’s political leanings haven’t made a major shift in the past four years, a small gust of party-affiliation change has blown across the state.

A decline in the overall percentage of voters registered as Republicans in the state over a four-year span has been nearly equaled by an increase in the percentage of Oregonians registered as nonaffiliated and minor party voters. And while the Democratic Party’s overall registration percentage held almost steady, this subtle tilt places a greater say in November’s general election into the hands of voters not in the traditional two major parties.

“I would stress that, if you are either a Republican or a Democrat, if you expect to win statewide elections in the future, you are going to have to win the votes of independent voters,” Portland political analyst Tim Hibbitts said. “There just aren’t enough members in either of the major parties to win elections.”

From January 2004 to January 2008, the percentage of all voters in the state who are registered Republicans dipped by 1.3 percentage points, to 35 percent. Over that same time period, the combination of nonaffiliated and minor-party registered voters rose 1.2 percentage points — from 24.8 percent of all registered voters four years ago to 26 percent this year — while the Democratic Party increased its overall percentage by a sliver, to 38.9 percent of the state’s voters.

Political observers expect a jump in the Democrats’ numbers ahead of Oregon’s May 20 primary, and they expect both parties to grow in advance of the November election.

The political shift takes place over a four-year period in which the state’s total population has grown by an average of about 1 percent a year to more than 3.7 million. Also in that time, the total number of registered voters in the state has jumped 4.6 percent, to 1,962,562.

And in Lane County, over that same time, the number of nonaffiliated and minor party voters has increased by more than 8 percent to 50,065, which is 26.2 percent of all registered voters in the county.

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