CAMPAIGN 2012

Report: Obama Registration Efforts Flagging

Updated: August 16, 2012 | 6:08 p.m.
August 16, 2012 | 4:18 p.m.

President Barack Obama speaks at a fundraising event at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, Ore., Tuesday, July 24, 2012.    (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Despite pouring resources into scores of voter-registration events in the last week alone, a Boston Globe analysis found that the Obama campaign has failed to significantly swell the rolls of Democratic voters in battleground states.

In five battleground states the for which the Globe was able to analyze registration data, Democratic registration increased by 39,580 voters, while Republican registration increased by 145,085.

The Obama campaign says that its successful registration efforts in 2008 largely exhausted the pool of unregistered Democrats, while the Republican primaries earlier this year provided a registration opportunity that Democrats were not afforded.

The Globe cited a study released earlier this week by Third Way, a left-leaning think tank, that showed Democratic registration down 800,000 people in eight battleground states and Republican registration down by 80,000 in those same states. Independent registration, on the other hand, has grown by nearly half a million voters in those states.

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