Nearly 20,000 voters left Massachusetts Democratic Party this year, possibly due to Donald Trump, elections chief Bill Galvin says


An informal rally for presidential candidate Donald Trump was staged on the steps of Springfield City Hall Sunday where an estimated 100 supporters attended the event. (Frederick Gore Photo)

Boston - Since the beginning of 2016, nearly 20,000 people in Massachusetts dropped their Democratic Party affiliation, largely joining the ranks of un-enrolled voters.

That's according to Bill Galvin, the state's elections chief, who spoke to reporters on Monday, a day before the Massachusetts presidential primary, also known as "Super Tuesday."

Galvin attributed the shift to Donald Trump, the front-runner for the Republican nomination and, if recent polls are correct, the expected winner of tomorrow's Republican primary in Massachusetts by a large margin.

"My guess is it's the Trump phenomenon," Galvin said. "I don't know. We'll find out after tomorrow."

Galvin added: "The reason I say that: If you look at what's different, what's different is, I mean, the tenor of the Republican campaign this year has been completely different than I think we've seen in prior Republican presidential campaigns."

Galvin, a Boston Democrat who has served as secretary of the commonwealth since 1995, said the tenor was called "crude" by the New York Times on Monday, a "fair" word to use.

"The fact of the matter is the tenor has been very different this time," he said. "And that has an effect. People are interested. It's exciting. That's my guess. I don't know."

A number of the un-enrolled may enter the polling booth and still pull a Democratic ballot.

If those voters had remained in the Democratic Party they would only have been able to vote on Tuesday to pull a Democratic Party ballot. Un-enrolled voters are able to pull Democratic, Republican or other party ballots.

"Now do I think that it's possible they all left to go vote in the Green Rainbow Party primary? It's possible, but not likely," Galvin said.

Similar voter shifts have occurred in the past, according to Galvin.

"In fact, in 2000, we had a shift sort of [in the] opposite direction of this, when John McCain was challenging George Bush. We had a lot of people who dropped the D at the time to vote for Mr. McCain in the [Republican] primary, but it wasn't as high as this year," he said.

This year, a "significant" number of registered Democratic voters went to the Massachusetts GOP, Galvin said. According to numbers provided by Galvin, 3,455 Democrats switched to the Republican Party.

Approximately 5,911 Republicans switched to un-enrolled status this year.

But the number of Democrats who decided to go for un-enrolled status, as of Feb. 29, is 16,347, according to Galvin.

That continues a long-term, ongoing trend of Massachusetts voters steadily continuing to choose un-enrolled status instead of choosing to enroll with one of the parties.

There are 4.3 million registered voters in Massachusetts, including inactive voters. Massachusetts has 2.28 million un-enrolled voters.

Democrats have a total of 1.5 million registered voters, while Republicans have 468,295 voters.

http://www.masslive.com/politics/ind...achusetts.html