Democrats outpace Republicans in voter registration

Nevada's Democrats have tripled their lead in voter registration over the state's Republicans in preparation for November's elections.

Registration statistics through December show Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than 1,200 voters, up from the about 400-voter advantage that the Democrats had gained by the end of November.

Republicans had held the majority of registered voters since October 1995, but that advantage slowly diminished until last October when Democrats took the lead, State Democratic Chairman Rory Reid said.

"There has been a lot of hard work put into our registration efforts, and I expect that trend to continue," Reid said. "I attribute this to people agreeing with what Democrats are doing and wanting to belong to this party."

In November 1998 the Democrats were down almost 3,000 voters to the GOP, but that lead dropped to just 555 by July 1999.

There are 379,483 registered Democratic voters compared with 378,257 Republicans in the state according to the statistics. In all there are 913,954 registered voters in the state.

The breakdown also shows 129,488 nonpartisan, 17,373 Independent American, 5,153 Libertarian, 902 Green, 686 Natural Law, 600 Reform and 2,012 signed up in other parties.

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