Democrats post big gains in voter registration

'We need more jobs'
Nationwide, there are about 42 million registered Democrats and about 31 million Republicans, according to statistics compiled by The Associated Press.

The Democrats have posted big gains in many competitive states, including Nevada, New Hampshire, Iowa, Colorado and Florida. They have also been targeting historically Republican southern states.

Since 2006, the Democrats have added 167,000 voters in North Carolina, while the Republicans have added 36,000. The Democrats' biggest voter registration goal is in Georgia, where the Obama campaign hopes to register 500,000 voters before the election, said Dean, who has spent the past month traveling the country on a voter registration bus tour.

"The Obama folks are serious about Georgia," Dean said. Georgia has added 337,000 voters since 2006, but the state does not identify them by party affiliation.

In Pennsylvania, the Democrats have added 375,000 voters since 2006 while the Republicans have lost 117,000.

America Votes, an umbrella organization, coordinates voter registration efforts for more than 40 groups in Pennsylvania, including unions, the NAACP and the Sierra Club.

On a recent weekday, two dozen volunteers canvas neighborhoods in five southwest Pennsylvania counties, targeting African-Americans in their teens and twenties, who tend to vote at lower rates than older voters.

Graham, the SEIU member, works the neighborhoods of Clairton, where the steel industry's decline has left more downtown storefronts boarded up than occupied.

Graham finds a potential voter at the first house she stops at. Justin Webb, a father of two, is unregistered, but tells Graham he has serious concerns about the economy.

"We need more jobs," said Webb, 28. "If we had more jobs, we would have more opportunities to better ourselves."

It takes Graham less than five minutes to register Webb as a Democrat.

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