Most Utahns who changed party affiliation switched to unaffiliated, 2024 election data shows

A voter drops off their ballot at the Salt Lake County Government Center in Salt Lake City as votes are cast in Utah’s primary election on Tuesday, June 25, 2024. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)

Because the Utah Republican Party holds a closed primary — and many of Republican-controlled Utah’s elections are decided in the primary — each year there tends to be speculation of “party raiding,” or Democrats switching their affiliation to Republican. 

But election registration statistics don’t show widespread party raiding — not this year, and not even before the Utah Legislature passed a bill in 2021 to move up party affiliation deadlines in an effort to cut off voters’ ability to switch parties months before the primary. 

Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson released updated registration statistics on Thursday, showing how many Utahns changed their party affiliation between Jan. 9 and Aug. 8. 

A total of 26,715 Utahns changed their party affiliation. Of those, 13,234 changed to unaffiliated, 5,312 changed to Republican, and 3,456 changed to Democrat. 

Along with the registration numbers, Henderson’s post noted the “biggest shift by far was voters switching from a political party to become unaffiliated.” 

“Also interesting is the number of voters moving to the Independent American Party (maybe they see ‘Independent’ and don’t realize it’s an actual political party?)” Henderson mused. 

Henderson also noted state law prohibits voters from changing their party affiliation during the primary election cycle — referring to a law that was passed in an effort to stave off so-called party raiding. 

The law, passed in 2021, initially set a deadline for March 31, but two years later, the 2023 Utah Legislature moved it up in presidential election years to be the day after the candidacy declaration filing period ends. This year, that deadline fell on Jan. 9 — so the registration data Henderson posted fell after the deadline. 

While the law restricts voters already registered with a political party from registering with another (for example, a Democrat switching to a Republican), those who are originally unaffiliated can register with a party up until a few weeks before the primary. This year that deadline fell on June 14.

Because the Utah GOP holds a closed primary, only registered Republicans can weigh in on their races, but Democrats (and other parties including Independent American, United Utah, and Utah Forward) allow an open primary so anyone can vote in those primary races, regardless of party affiliation. 

After the primary, voters can change their party affiliation without restrictions (that is, until roughly six months before the next primary). So the party affiliation changes included in Henderson’s election data all likely occurred after the June 25 primary had come and gone. 

“Mass party raiding did not occur in 2024,” Sen. Dan McCay, R-Riverton, posted on X in reaction to the registration data. 

Does Utah’s anti ‘party raiding’ law make a difference? 

It’s possible the law prevented some Utahns from changing their party affiliation leading up to this year’s primary — but it’s also worth noting that the data didn’t show widespread party raiding in 2020, either, the last comparable presidential election year before Utah enacted the law. 

Using records from Utah’s statewide voter registration database, the Electoral Innovation Lab at Princeton University conducted an analysis in 2020. That analysis found Republican registrations grew by 97,382 or 14.3% between January and June of 2020, driven by a decrease of unaffiliated voters of 60,878. Democratic registrations increased most of the year, but decreased slightly in the three weeks leading up to the primary by 7,796. 

 “Democratic registrations into the GOP could not account for this Republican surge,” analysts wrote. 

In an effort to find evidence about “voters’ true intentions, we examined re-registrations after the primary,” the analysis said. “After the primary, 2,509 people who voted that day later re-registered as Democrats, 1,495 re-registered as unaffiliated, and 305 re-registered with a third party. This means a maximum of 4,309 voters (2,509+1,495+305) potentially went back to a non-Republican affiliation after the primary, with at most 2,509 of them being Democrats (0.2% of all registered Utah voters).”

“The contention that Democratic voters tried to ‘game’ the system by switching parties to vote in the 2020 Republican primary is not supported by the data from the Utah Election Board,” the Electoral Innovation Lab analysis reported. “Any pre-primary growth in the Republican party was driven by newly registered Republicans and formerly unaffiliated voters, not by party-switching Democrats. Therefore, the data suggest that the principal driver of new Republican registrations was interest in competitive political races.” 

Pointing to that 2020 analysis, the Electoral Innovation Lab argued against the 2021 bill, which ultimately passed with support from Utah’s GOP-supermajority Legislature. 

Interestingly, the 2020 figure of 2,509 voters who switched back to Republican affiliation is strikingly close to the 2,654 voters who registered as Republicans but switched to Democrats this year. 

Utah’s total 2024 voter registration statistics

Utah, which has an estimated population of more than 3.4 million (which includes children not of voting age), has a total of more than 1.9 registered voters. Of those, about 1.7 million of them are classified as active, according to updated voter registration statistics posted on the state’s election website. 

About 261,741 of those voters are deemed inactive because they haven’t voted in two regular elections and have not responded to a notice from their county clerk. 

Utah’s total active voter registration grew from about 1.68 million in January of this year by about 35,078 voters, according to historical voter registration records. 

It’s likely Utah will see even more voters register between now and the Nov. 5 election. In 2020, about 230,000 active voters were added to Utah’s voter rolls between January and Nov. 3, according to state records. 

It remains to be seen whether this year’s presidential race, however, will drum up the same amount of voter registrations as 2020.