Entering the 2024 presidential election cycle, the number of registered voters in Arizona has dropped by nearly 100,000 since summer 2023.
As a result, registered Republicans have regained the top spot among organized voter blocs. Last summer, “indepdendent” voters registered outside all the recognized political parties outnumbered both Republicans and Democrats.
Of the more than 4.1 million voters in the state as of January 2, 1,418,407 were Republicans, amounting to just less than 35 percent. That’s slightly ahead of the 1,410,085 voters (just more than 34 percent) who had no party preference or were registered with parties not recognized by the state. The Democratic Party continues in third place, with 1,211.940 registered voters (just less than 30 percent), according to a quarterly report released by Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes.
Despite a GOP voter registration edge, Democrats managed to win races for governor, U.S. Senate, Secretary of State and Attorney General in the 2022 midterms.
Members of the Libertarian, No Labels and Green Party each make up less than 1 percent of registered voters.
The No Labels Party, a well-funded effort across multiple states to set the stage for a possible third-party run at the White House in 2024, saw a jump in numbers from 8,505 last July to 25,924 at the start of 2024.
No Labels Party leaders recently won a Maricopa County Superior Court lawsuit defending their right to block candidates from running on the party’s ticket except for the presidential race.
While No Labels calls itself “a national movement of commonsense Americans pushing our leaders together to solve some of our country’s biggest problems,” critics have said the political organization could siphon votes from President Joe Biden’s reelection effort and set the stage for presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump to return to the White House. So far, party leaders have not said whether they will run a candidate in the 2024 election.
Of Pima County’s 626,893 registered voters, 238,434 were Democrats (38 percent), 173,314 were Republicans (28 percent) and 206,156 were not registered with any of the recognized political parties (33 percent). Less than 1 percent of Pima County voters were registered with the Libertarian, No Labels or Green political parties. The Green Party recently regained ballot status, after falling off the list of recognized political parties for several years due to the small number of voters registered.
Unlike other elections in Arizona, the state’s March 19 presidential preference election is not open to independent voters. Those wishing to vote in the Republican or Democratic presidential nominating contest must register with their preferred party by February 20.