Voter rolls swell in South Brunswick

by Sean Ruppert, Staff Writer
   Local Democratic and Republican party officials say that high interest in the February presidential primary was the likely cause of a significant increase in party identification among registered voters in South Brunswick.
   Thus far this year the Democrats have increased their ranks in town by 3,289 voters to a total of 8,080 registered Democrats. This represents a 68 percent increase over the party’s total of 4,791 registered Democrats in 2007.
   Republicans also increased their base by 842 new members, for a total of 3,410 registered Republicans in South Brunswick. This is a 32 percent increase from their constituency of 2,568 registered Republicans in 2007.
   Overall voter registration also increased by 13 percent to 24,280 registered voters, from 21,393 in 2007.
   South Brunswick Democratic Chairman Bernard Hvozdovic said the local party has not done anything out of the ordinary to drive up their party identification numbers.
   ”We’ve kind of done this year what we have done every year,” Mr. Hvozdovic said. “I think that the Obama factor played a lot into it though. A lot of the new Ds I am sure aren’t all new voters, but previously unaffiliated voters that are now Ds. The energy of the primary campaign attracted a lot of people to vote in the primary.”
   Republican Chairwoman Lynda Woods Cleary had a similar assessment of the increase in Republican numbers.
   ”I don’t think that we on the local level could take credit for that,” Ms. Woods Cleary said. “The local candidates have been talking to people and encouraging them to register so they can fully participate in our democracy, but I think the primary in February had quite a bit to do with it.”
   In 2007, about 34 percent of voters registered in South Brunswick were affiliated with either party, while 66 percent of voters were unaffiliated. Democrats were 22 percent of registered voters and Republicans were 12 percent. In 2008, about 47 percent of all voters have declared a party, with 33 percent of them declaring as Democrats and 14 percent declaring as Republicans.
   Ingrid Reed, of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University, said party identification has increased statewide, with Democrats seeing by far the biggest gains.
   Ms. Reed said that in 2004, about 45 percent of registered voters identified with one of the two major parties. In 2008, she said that number is 55 percent of New Jersey’s roughly 5 million registered voters. While she said much of that was likely driven by the presidential primary, the growth has continued throughout the summer. Statewide there were 82,000 newly registered voters between June 8 and Sept. 16, with 41 percent of those voters registering as Democrats, 9 percent as Republicans and 50 unaffiliated.
   During the same time period in Middlesex County, she said there were roughly 8,000 new voters registered, about 32 percent of whom registered as Democrats and 6 percent as Republicans.
   ”It is really phenomenal participation that we are seeing,” Ms. Reed said. “The excitement has gone beyond the primary, the interest is really keeping up.”