More people in Boulder County aren’t registered with a political party and fewer are voting, according to a report released by the county Clerk and Recorder’s office earlier this week.

The report offers a glimpse into trends from the 2024 election. Voter turnout in Boulder County eclipsed the national figure — 84.4% of registered voters locally had their ballot counted, as opposed to about 64% nationally — but it dropped nearly six percentage points compared to 2020.

“We have a very engaged community here in Boulder County that likes to know what’s going on with elections,” said Molly Fitzpatrick, the clerk and recorder for Boulder County.

Voter turnout dipped in each of the five age groups — 18-25 years, 26-40 years, 41-60 years, 61-70 years and 71-plus years — but the steepest drop-offs came in the two youngest categories.

Turnout among voters aged 18 to 25 years had a steep, roughly 11 percentage point drop to 68.8%. The report shows that the age group had a 79.8% turnout in the 2016 and 2020 election cycles. For 26-40 years, 76.9% had their ballot counted — a nearly nine percentage point drop from 2020.

Turnout also dropped in each of the municipalities and unincorporated areas of Boulder County. Longmont had the largest share of registered voters in the county (68,836 people) and had an 80.9% turnout. The city of Boulder’s reported turnout was 84%.

Boulder County also mirrored the national trend in the rise of unaffiliated voters. Nearly half of registered voters in Boulder County aren’t members of any political party at 47.8%, a 6.3 percentage point jump from 2020. Registered Democrats dropped by more than 8 percentage points to 39.6%. Registered Republicans accounted for 10.7% of voters in the county, about a 22.4 percentage point drop. Third-party registrants jumped by less than half of a percentage point to 1.9%.

Fitzpatrick pointed to automatic voter registration as a possible explanation for the rise in unaffiliated voters. In Colorado, someone is automatically registered as an unaffiliated voter when they get their driver’s license.

“That raises important questions about how do we engage and how do we inform that growing block of voters?” Fitzpatrick said.

“Especially as we look ahead toward next year, because next year we have primaries and unaffiliated voters can vote in either primary, but you can only vote in one.”

Other tidbits• 184,569 people in Boulder County cast their ballots by mail, or 92.8% of ballots counted. Eighty percent of those who voted by mail dropped off their ballots in a 24-hour ballot drop box.

• The University Memorial Center at CU was the most popular voting center in the state. That was based on how many people were served at the voting center, Fitzpatrick said. “To me, it speaks to the way that we were able to provide service to voters that needed to make some change to their registration, get a mail ballot, (and) register to vote for the first time,” Fizpatrick said.

• 89.2% of registered Democrats voted, compared to 86.4% of registered Republicans. Both parties experienced about a 4 percentage point drop from 2020.