Registered Democratic voters grow in Maricopa County, latest report says

PHOENIX — Maricopa County continues to trend toward becoming a toss-up in the upcoming 2020 Presidential Election, according to numbers released in the Arizona Secretary of State quarterly voter registration report released on Friday.

Democratic registered voters in the state’s most populous county have grown by nearly 26,000 since the start of the year among active voters, according to the report, while Republican registered active voters have decreased by just under 5,000 people.

Active voters are those whose information is up to date — about 4.4 million people across the state.

Inactive voters, though still eligible to vote, are those who have yet to submit a new registration form, updated their address or had two election mailings returned undeliverable.

While Democratic active registered voters have grown since the start of the year, Republican registered active voters still have the majority in the county.

According to the report, 835,561 active voters in the county are registered Republican as opposed to 749,918 active registered Democrats.

Republicans also still hold a nearly 94,000 lead among active voters across the state, but the Democrat active voters in Arizona have grown by more than 48,000 since the start of the year.

The political tide began to shift statewide in 2018, as Democrat candidate for U.S. Senate Kyrsten Sinema beat Republican competitor Martha McSally.

Sinema edged out McSally 51% to 46.8% in Maricopa County, a crucial victory on her path to becoming Arizona’s senior senator.

It was the first time Arizona elected a Democratic U.S. senator since Dennis W. DeConcini in 1977.

McSally was later appointed to the U.S. Senate by Gov. Doug Ducey to fill the spot of the late John McCain who passed away in August 2018.

The state has been a lock for Republican presidential candidates since the 1950s, with Arizona voting red in every presidential election except for 1996.

That may change in 2020.

Along with the quarterly voter registration report, the Phoenix-based OH Predictive Insights recently released a poll of likely voters that showed Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden pulled ahead of Republican President Donald Trump 52% to 43% in the general election survey.

The 600 poll participates, made up of 234 Republicans, 204 Democrats and 162 independents, were called to take part in the survey conducted April 7-8. The margin of error was 4%.

Chief pollster Mike Noble was quoted in the poll release saying Trump will need Maricopa County if he hopes to win the state in November.

While the Republican party leads in Maricopa County with active voters, there are more inactive voters registered as Democrats in the county.

The report states 87,252 inactive voters in the county are registered to the Democratic party as opposed to 78,276 registered to the Republican party, an increase of about 23,500 people since the start of 2020.

There are just over 495,000 inactive voters statewide, according to the report.

Statewide voter registration numbers show a similar story to Maricopa County, as the Republican Party holds a 2% lead over the Democratic party among active voters, while the Democratic party has a 2% lead over Republicans among inactive voters.

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