DISAPPEARING VENTURA COUNTY
DEMOCRATS

The political description of Ventura County during the
late 1990s — "trending Democratic" — has been buried
after the first few years of the 21st century. Voter
registration figures in advance of today's election
show that Republicans have increased their dominance
among registered voters over the last two years —
making relative gains in each of the county's 10
cities.

Just before the 1998 gubernatorial election, Democrats
had come within 2.3 percentage points of
Republicans among registred voters in the county.
Since then, Republicans have almost doubled their lead
and now enjoy a 4.5 percentage-point gap.

Republicans now account for 42.3 percent of county
voters, up from 41.3 two years ago, while Democrats
have fallen to 37.8 percent, down from 38.9 in 2002.
Because the voter rolls are purged after each
gubernatorial election, the number of registered
voters in each party has declined, but while the
Republican total fell by only about 5,000, the number
of registered Democrats plummeted by more than 12,000.

In those cities in which Republicans outnumbered
Democrats, the gap widened. In those cities in which
Democrats held an edge, the gap narrowed. The biggest
change was in Democrat-dominated Oxnard, in which a 27
percentage point edge was narrowed to 23 points.

Camarillo retained its distinction as the most
Republican of county cities, with 49.5 percent of
registered voters in the GOP. It was followed by Simi
Valley (49.2 percent), Thousand Oaks (48.9 percent)
and Moorpark (47.2 percent).

Keep an eye on Ventura, long the most partisan city in the county. The political tilt could soon
be shifting. Democratic voters now outnumber
Republicans in Ventura by just 536 — 22,756 to 22,420.

In Ventura County, as everywhere else in California,
decline-to-state voters continue to increase as a
percentage of the whole. In two years,
decline-to-states in the county went from 14.3 percent
of the total to 15.0 percent.