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By Sheena Dooley | Iowa Watchdog
DES MOINES – Iowans in the past month have flocked to the Republican Party, with the number of registered voters growing by more than 11,500, according to new figures from the Iowa Secretary of State’s office.
GOP voters in the state reached 619,452 in July, marking a 2 percent increase from the previous month. Democrats gained 2,651 registered voters during the same time span for a total of 598,074, the numbers showed. That represents a gain of less than 1 percent.
Independents still outnumbered Republicans and Democrats with 663,969 registered voters. That figure is down from June’s totals by 8,512.
Registered Republicans surpassed their Democratic counterparts in April. It was the first time they have outpaced Democrats since 2006. Voter registration numbers from April had actually dropped slightly in June, before spiking upward this month.
The figures are worth watching because Democrats held a 106,000-voter advantage at the end of October 2008, after which President Barack Obama carried the state by nearly 10 percentage points. President George W. Bush narrowly won the state by less than a percentage point in 2004, when the GOP had a 4,400-voter advantage.
