Despite the Democratic wins in Arizona in 2020 and 2022, Republicans have widened their voter registration edge over Democrats over the past four years. According to data from the Arizona Secretary of State earlier this year, between 2020 and 2024, Republicans increased their lead from approximately 3 percent to 5.77 percent. In Maricopa County, Republicans increased their lead even more, from 4 percent to 7 percent.
The change has occurred primarily with Democratic voter registrations; Republican voter registration has remained steady at 35 percent. Statewide, Republicans constitute 35.07 percent of voters, followed by independents at 34.10 percent and Democrats at 29.30 percent. While Republicans outnumber independents at the state level by almost 40,000 voters, independents outnumber Republicans in Maricopa County by 2,631.
In 2020, at the time of the general election, Republicans made up 35.24 percent of registered voters, 3 percent more than Democrats at 32.20 percent. Independents lagged behind at 31.67 percent. In Maricopa County, Republicans constituted 35.26 percent to Democrats’ 31.37, with independents ahead of the Democrats at 32.39 percent.
The increase in Republicans’ lead has been steady throughout the last four years, beginning in 2021. In 2021, Democrats and independents were tied with 32 percent of each vote. Republicans made up 34.50 percent of registered voters. In 2023, Democrats dropped to around 30 percent.
Independents made gains at the expense of Democrats. A 2015 survey by Arizona State University’s Morrison Institute for Public Policy found that 14.6 percent of Arizona independents identify as conservatives, 12.1 percent as liberals, and 73.3 percent as moderates.
While the total number of registered voters in Arizona increased during most of the past four years, it began decreasing again recently, likely due to pressure on election officials to clean the voter rolls. During the 2020 general election, there were 4,281,152 registered voters in the state. That decreased to 4,096,260 voters earlier this year. Similarly, there were 2,595,272 registered voters in Maricopa County in late 2020, which decreased to 2,409,115 this year.
In Maricopa County, the new No Labels party reached 17,687 registered voters, about 0.7 percent. Libertarians have slightly more at 19,623, about 0.8 percent. The Green Party trails behind with 1,587 registered voters.
In heavily Democratic Pima County, Democrats lost 1 percent of their lead over Republicans and lost another 1 percent to independents. Democrats went from 40 percent to 38 percent, while Republicans, who also lost 1 percent to independents, went from 29 to 28 percent.
Republicans ramped up voter registration efforts this year as one approach to dealing with expected election fraud, which was peeling away votes. Former President Donald Trump won over 248,000 more votes in Arizona in 2020 than he did in 2016, even though he lost the race. Maricopa County was the only Arizona county to flip in the 2020 election.
A larger percentage of Republicans than Democrats voted in the 2022 midterm election, 75.4 percent of their numbers compared to only 68.5 percent of their registered voters.
