Historically, Marion County has been considered to be relatively conservative, especially compared to its more liberal cousins to the north and the south. In the past, statistics bore out this perception. A look at the trend in the figures over the past three-and-a-half years shows that, up until the past few months, party registration in the county has been remarkably static.  

This stable margin of difference was maintained up until a few months ago, which suggests that the current wave of high Democratic Party affiliation may represent an anomaly, rather than a trend.
According to Marion County Clerk Bill Burgess, this year Marion County has witnessed a distinct change in party affiliation. Since the beginning of 2008, voters have been registering as Democrats in droves. The actual numbers of which party has the most registered voters, according to Burgess, changes multiple times throughout each day. At the time of press, the Republicans outnumbered Democrats by 17 voters.

To what does Burgess attribute the change?  

"It may be people are excited to vote. There are 7,000 new registered voters."

The large number of new voters also represents strong get-out-the-vote efforts. Burgess notes that the Obama campaign has come in to the county clerk's office frequently to pick up voter registration cards.  

The swelling of the Democratic ranks has come from a number of places. Some who were previously registered as Republicans have switched their party affiliation to Democrat. While voter registration overall has gone up, the actual number of registered Republicans in the county has gone down -- Republicans have seen a net loss of 40 registered voters.  There are 1,643 registered Republicans who switched their party affiliation to Democrat.    

New Democratic voters have also come from the ranks of the non-affiliated. The number of non-affiliated registered voters has decreased by 2 percent since the beginning of this year.  Of the 2,461 previously non-affiliated voters in Marion County who decided to switch affiliation, 2,066 of them have re-registered as Democrats.  
More and more young people are registering, and according to Burgess, they are mostly registering as Democrats. Historically, younger people have been non-affiliated voters. In the more recent past, Burgess reported, younger Marion County voters were typically registering as Republicans. In the past few months, however, the younger voters registering have overwhelmingly been registering as Democrats.

Then there are those who are looking to create mischief with their primary votes.  

"I've had a few people come in who say, `I want to register as a Democrat for just this primary but then switch me back to Republican afterwards.'"
Burgess adds that, while people can certainly switch back and forth from one party to another, the county clerk's office cannot make the switch for them.

Last month's primary saw a significantly larger percentage of Democrats than Republicans participating.  While 72 percent of registered Democrats cast votes in the primary election, only 58 percent of registered Republicans participated.    
Does Burgess think that Marion County is turning blue?

"It's hard to say how much the change in figures represents tactical alliance-changing versus long-term changes." stated Burgess. "I really don't know if this is a sea change or an aberration."

Whether the shift in voter registration is a microcosm of the national trend toward increased Democratic Party voter registration generated by the close Democratic primary race and the public's discontent with the current state of affairs, or represents a longer-term Marion County lean towards the left, remains to be seen.  

At the moment, however, Marion County is looking marionberry purple.