Nevada GOP holds slim margin over Democrats

Thursday, Aug. 19, 1999 | 11:59 a.m.

SUN STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

CARSON CITY -- Republicans continue to keep a razor-thin lead over Democrats in the number of people registered to political parties, the secretary of state's office says.

However, Democrats have a substantial lead in Clark County where 562,889 of the state's 895,752 voters are registered.

Latest figures show there are 372,464 Republicans registered in Nevada, a 504-voter lead over Democrats, who have 371,960 registered party members.

The GOP has kept a lead over Democrats of 1,000 or fewer registered voters since February.

In Clark County, Democrats continue to have the most registered voters. The party's edge over the GOP increased by 134 voters to 35,333.

Democratic voters in Clark County increased by 1,082 voters to 251,650, and Republicans registered 948 more voters for a total of 216,317.

Clark County's non-partisan voters reached 79,388 increasing 561 from 78,827.

For more than 60 years, the Democrats were the majority party in Nevada, even holding more than a 2-to-1 voters lead in the 1960s. But in October 1995, the Republicans became the most popular party for the first time since the Depression.

By April 1996, the Republican lead over Democrats reached more than 10,000 voters. Since that time, the Democrats have been steadily cutting into the margin and threatening to again become the most popular party.

Besides the Republican and Democrats voter figures, an additional 125,611 people were registered as nonpartisan at the end of July. There were 16,827 Independent Americans, 4,965 Libertarians and 840 Green Party members.

In all, 895,752 people were registered to vote, down about 10,000 from the record number of registrations reached last December. Voter registrars since have removed some people from the registrations for not voting for several elections.