I am trying to find reliable statistics on the number of people
registered in the Democratic and Republican parties nationally.  I'm
not interested in the number of people that voted in elections, but
rather in how many people have simply registered in either party (or
as independents).  Thanks.

---

Request for Question Clarification by pinkfreud-ga on 06 Jul 2003 08:56 PDT

I've found figures from 2000 that were published in a national
newspaper. Would this be satisfactory, or are you needing more recent
estimates?

---

Clarification of Question by greed9-ga on 06 Jul 2003 10:47 PDT

2000 is fine, as long as you think the source is reliable.

Here are the figures you need, from a "USA Today" article published in
November 2000:

"204 million eligible voters (age 18 or older)
  63 million registered Democrats
  47 million registered Republicans
  32 million registered as independents or with minor party
  62 million not registered"

USA Today 
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/columnists/neuharth/neu057.htm

I tried several tactics to find this information, only to learn that
most of the statistics on the Web regarding party registation are
local rather than national (an astonishing number of pages discussing
this subject are from California.) This is the search string which was
most successful:

Google Web Search: "million registered republicans"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22million+registered+republicans

I hope this is useful. If anything is unclear, or if the link does not
function, please request clarification; I'll be glad to offer further
assistance before you rate my answer.

Best regards,
pinkfreud

Yeah, I had the same problem with finding only local statistics. 
Seems like there is a market out there for someone to compile all
those individuals figures into one reliable number.  Oh well.  The USA
Today article is good.  Thanks.

How are voters counted for states that do not require party registration?