Election fever spurs January growth in Nevada voter registration

With growing interest in the 2016 elections spurred by the approaching caucuses, Nevada’s list of active voters rose by close to 16,000 from December to January.

But a full third of those additions are existing registered voters who reactivated their status by either listing a new address or reconfirming their old address to participate in the process. The overall total number of registered active and inactive voters climbed just more than 10,000 to 1,469,500.

Because only the two major parties hold caucuses, the numbers show only minimal increases in new voters for the minor parties.

Nevada Republicans and Democrats are hoping the Silver State is in for record turnout like the Iowa caucuses saw Monday night.

Democrats here caucus Feb. 20, Republicans Feb. 23.

Nevada Democrats hold an overall voter registration advantage of 92,278 — 585,890 to 493,612. The third largest group is the non-partisans who finished January with 295,319 registered voters. Political observers have long held non-partisans decide who actually wins elections in this state, but that total is up just 554 from December.

Democrats outpaced Republicans in adding to their total active registrations but not by a huge amount — 7,142 to 6,720. In terms of new registrations, Republicans turned the tables, adding 5,004 compared to 4,805 for the Democrats.

For the Independent American Party, Nevada’s largest group after non-partisans, active registration went up 365 to 56,005 while total registration — new voters increased by just 43 to 70,323.

The remaining parties including Libertarians and the Green have a total of just more than 24,000 registered voters and, for the most part, changed little from December through January.

In Carson City, there are now 21,098 actives and 27,620 total registered — an increase of 621 active voters by just 126 new voters added to the roles. In Carson, Republicans have a strong registration advantage — 10,002 to 6,466 actives and 12,179 to 8,593 total voters.

The disparity is even wider in Churchill and Douglas counties. Churchill has just 2,747 total registered Democrats, 2,497 of them actives, compared to 7,360 Republicans, 6,819 of them actives.

Douglas reports 16,974 Republicans, 13,736 actives, compared to 7,884 Democrats, 5,667 of them listed as active voters.