Friday, January 21st 2022, 9:41 pm
The state election board said in the past two years, the Republican party has gained 114,013 registered voters in Oklahoma.
Meanwhile, Democrats have lost 41,533.
It's a trend a former Tulsa mayor and state representative said has been a long time coming.
Data released this week shows, since January of 2020, Oklahoma has gained 128,267 registered voters putting the state at 2.2 million total.
In the past two years, party affiliations have also changed, with Republicans now making up more than half of all voters in Oklahoma.
That is a two percent increase in the past two years.
Democrats continue to lose voters dropping from 35 percent to 31.
"When I see numbers like what we saw this week, I think to myself, well that's what we would have expected it to be,” said Rodger Randle.
Randle is a professor at OU-Tulsa and was a Democratic state representative in the 1970s and 80s.
He also served as mayor of Tulsa from 1988 to 92.
"In many states the parties are hardening,” said Randle. “In states that tend to be Democrat, they’re becoming more Democrat. In state's that tend to be Republican, they’re becoming more Republican.”
Randle said Oklahoma has always been a conservative state but historically voted Democrat especially at the state level.
As politics have changed nationwide, party registrations have also slowly changed.
Democrats were the largest political party in Oklahoma as recently as 2014.
By November of that year, Republicans gained an edge and it's been that way ever since.
Randle said data like this is helpful for November, but in both big and small races, a lot of factors are at play.
"Clearly it's good news for Republicans,” said Randle. “We have these other factors at work so it's not as much as good as it might otherwise be."
The number of Oklahomans registered as Independents also grew over the last two years and now makes up 17 percent of voters in the state.
A full look at the data can be found here.
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