A report this week said that the number of unaffiliated voters is surging in Utah while Republican registration is declining. But about a third of this year’s growth in Utah’s unaffiliated voters came from an administrative change, not from people abandoning traditional political parties.
Unaffiliated active voters rose by about 29,000 this year. Democrats are up about 13,000, and Republicans are down about 7,000.
Those totals are accurate. But the Utah Lieutenant Governor’s Office’s weekly registration reports show roughly 10,400 of those new unaffiliated voters were moved there by the state. Remove them, and Democrats, not independents, have grown fastest.
Where 10,000 independents came from
The Utah Lieutenant Governor's Office publishes voter registration totals by party every week. In a typical week this year, the unaffiliated count grew by a few hundred voters, and sometimes by as many as 800.
Then, between the February 17 and February 23 reports, unaffiliated active voters jumped by 10,421 in a single week.
That same week, the No Labels Party vanished from the state’s report after the national party dissolved. It had 10,234 active voters the week before. The state reclassified them as unaffiliated.
Unaffiliated voters still posted larger raw gains than any party once those voters are removed, and that is true. But those former No Labels voters account for about a third of the year’s growth in unaffiliated voters. From Jan. 5 to June 8, they made up about two-thirds. Without them, unaffiliated active voters grew by roughly 5,400 over that stretch, or about 1.1%. Active Democrats grew 3.7%.
Democrats are growing faster
Raw numbers favor big groups. Utah has about twice as many unaffiliated voters as Democrats, so equal growth rates produce roughly twice the gain. A fairer comparison is the rate of growth.
With the reclassification removed, Democrats are growing about 40% faster than unaffiliated voters.
The state’s weekly reports show the same pattern earlier in the year. From Jan. 5 to June 8, active Democrats grew 3.7%, from 239,108 to 248,071. They make up about 14% of Utah's active voters, but accounted for half of all net growth in active voters during those five months.
A lot of that increase came in a burst. Across the three weekly reports from March 23 to April 6, Democrats added about 3,850 active voters, 43% of their gain for the period. That window falls around the April 1 deadline for changing party affiliation before the June primary.
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Republicans held steady until the primary
The drop in Republican registration is real, but the weekly data suggests it’s not a steady exodus.
From Jan. 5 to June 8, active Republicans actually grew slightly, from 921,870 to 922,551. The party dipped by about 1,100 active voters in the weeks around the April 1 party affiliation deadline, then regained roughly 2,000 between April 6 and June 8.
That aligns with how Utah primaries work. Only registered Republicans can vote in the GOP primary, while anyone can vote in the Democratic primary. Unaffiliated voters who wanted a say in Republican races had to join the party. Voters already registered with a party couldn’t switch until after the June 23 primary.
Essentially, all of the GOP decline came after June 8. The likeliest explanation is voters left once they could switch parties after the primary, including some who joined only to vote in the primary
What the numbers actually show
Utah voters are shifting slowly, and not toward an “independent surge.”
From January and June, the Republican share of active voters slipped from 52.5% to 52.0%. That happened because every other group grew, not because Republicans left in large numbers. Democrats rose from 13.6% to 14.0%. Unaffiliated voters rose from 27.6% to 28.2%, with most of that increase coming from a party that no longer exists.
Republicans still outnumber Democrats by more than 3½ to 1 among active voters. Democrats and unaffiliated voters combined still trail Republicans.
Even at this year's pace, parity is a long way off. If Democrats kept growing 5.4% a year and Republicans kept shrinking 0.8% a year, Democrats would not match Republicans until about 2047.
Unaffiliated voters would get there sooner. At their 3.9% rate without the one-time No Labels bump, they would pull even with Republicans around 2039. Counting the former No Labels members, the date moves up to about 2035, but that one-time bump can't happen again.
Those estimates are generous. They assume that Democratic and independent growth compounds every year. They also treat the Republican decline, which appears to be tied to a post-primary surge, as a steady annual trend. If the raw numbers repeated each year, Democrats would need more than 30 years to catch up.
