Election 2000

WASHINGTON (AP) - Republicans mobilized their parties' voters more effectively than Democrats did in the 2000 presidential election, according to a voter report, even while the share of the electorate that didn't identify with either party continued to rise.

Voter turnout was up: 51.2 percent of the voting age population, or 105,399,313 voters, compared with 49 percent in 1996. Much of the turnout increase was in so-called battleground states where the presidential campaigns were concentrated. The turnout increase in those states was twice the turnout increase elsewhere.

``We had an increase in voter turnout because of an increase in grass-roots activity,'' said Curtis Gans, director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, a nonpartisan research group that reported the voting results Thursday.

The report showed that Democratic voter registration continued a steady decline that started in the 1960s.

``The Republicans did a better job and used their money more effectively than the Democrats in grass-roots work,'' Gans said.

Republicans increased their turnout in every state and the District of Columbia. The Democratic Party increased turnout in 29 states and lost in 21 states.

Gans suggested this was due partly to the depressed voter turnout the GOP had in 1996. He also cited the larger financial commitment the party made to voter turnout, while Democrats relied more on outside groups like labor, blacks and environmentalists.

``When you're right on the issues, you don't have to spend as much money to turn out and vote for you,'' said Bill Buck, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee. ``We have a number of groups who are well organized and with us on the issues who do a great job of turning out voters.''

A significant development was the continuing rise in the number of people unwilling to identify with either party, Gans said. He estimated that independents make up about a fifth of the electorate now, compared with about 1 percent in the 1920s.

Democrats make up about a third of the electorate and continue to have a registration edge on Republicans, who make up about a fourth, he said. Democrats made up almost half of the electorate in 1984, the year of Ronald Reagan's re-election.

Registration in 2000 went down to an estimated 65 percent of the voting age population despite the National Voter Registration Act, known as the motor voter law, as well as the increasing availability of online voter forms and other efforts to make registration easier.

It was the first drop in registration since the motor voter law was enacted in 1995.

Some election reforms such as early voting and all-mail voting have done little to help turnout, and in the case of early voting may have actually hurt turnout in some states.

Of all the reforms in election laws, the most effective at enhancing voter turnout appeared to be election day registration, now used in a handful of states.

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