Politics & Government

Valley Saw Last-Minute Surge in Voter Registration

Both Northampton and Lehigh counties will have more registered voters in the 2012 presidential election than they had in 2008. Democrats hold substantial edge in both counties.

 

The voter registration offices of Northampton and Lehigh counties both saw last-minute surges, giving each a greater number of registered voters for the 2012 presidential election than they had in 2008.

Democrats held a substantial edge in both counties, outnumbering Republicans by 31,000 in Northampton County and 36,000 in Lehigh County as of late last week.

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However, representatives of both voter registration offices said they had more names to input into their records from last-minute registrations.

As of Friday morning (Oct. 12), Northampton County had 101,338 registered Democrats, 70,321 Republicans and 37,426 independents and members of other parties, according to Dee Rumsey, county director of elections.

Find out what's happening in Bethlehemwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

That’s a total number of 209,085 voters, though it was being updated by the minute. That tops registration for the 2008 presidential election, when Northampton County had 208,521 registered voters. In that election, county residents cast 130,417 votes  – a turnout of 62 percent.

Rumsey said her office might be logging in new voter registrations until close to the Nov. 6 election because she has to verify each voter’s address and the county has many new housing developments with new street addresses.

Lehigh County voter registration, as of the morning of Oct. 11, was 76,135 Republicans, 112,411 Democrats and 36,741 Independents and members of other parties, according to Tim Benyo, Lehigh County chief clerk of Voter Registration and Elections.

That’s a total of 225,287, with Democrats having a 36,276 edge over Republicans, There were 224,086 people registered to vote in the 2008 presidential election and 68 percent of them did, according to the county Voter Registration web site.


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