El Paso Matters will be providing demographic updates of the county’s voting patterns through the election season. We’ll start with a look at who is eligible to vote in the election.

El Paso’s youngest and oldest adults are the main drivers of increased voter registration since the 2016 election, an El Paso Matters analysis shows.

El Paso County has more than 486,000 registered voters eligible to vote in the Nov. 3 election, an increase of about 59,000 since the last presidential election in 2016.

The largest increase in registered voters was among those 65 and older, which is primarily a result of people aging into the senior citizen category. That age group has about 20% more registered votes than in 2016.

The second-largest increase was in voters 30 and younger, up 16%.

Voters age 30-44 and 45-64 showed lower growth rates. That’s not surprising because El Paso’s population has not grown since the 2016 election, in large part because thousands of people have moved out of El Paso in search of higher pay. 

Women continue to constitute about 52 percent of El Paso registered voters.

More than 112,000 of El Paso’s eligible voters registered since the last presidential election in 2016, about a quarter of all those now registered. About 53,000 people who were registered in El Paso County for the 2016 election are no longer on the voter rolls, because they died or moved away.

About half the new registered voters since 2016 are age 30 and younger.

Slightly more men than women have registered to vote in El Paso County since the last presidential election.

Cover photo: Voters wait in line at Bassett Place on the first day of early voting in El Paso. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)