More new voters in Arizona are registering as independents than as members of all the major political parties combined. Consider this: From April 1 through July 1, the number of voters statewide jumped nearly 39,800.

GRAPHIC: See a breakdown of how new voters registered

Among them, 53 percent registered as independents or as members of unrecognized political parties, according to the Secretary of State’s Office.

By comparison, 36 percent of new voters signed on as Democrat, 11 percent declared themselves Republican and fewer than 1 percent registered as Libertarian.

“That really is amazing. That has to be a groundbreaking trend,” said Earl de Berge, a pollster who has studied Arizona politics for 45 years.

Voter dissatisfaction has been on the rise for years, but it never has boiled over to the point that the majority of new voters were shunning the major parties, he said.

The numbers indicate that the Republican and Democratic parties haven’t embraced the views of average Arizonans, said de Berge, research director for Behavior Research Center, a Phoenix-based public opinion research firm.

“It’s a general belief that the political parties have been captured by the extremes. People are just basically voting with their feet and say, ‘You know what? I want to be unaffiliated with political parties,’” he said.

Voter registration numbers showed a similar trend in Maricopa and Pinal counties.

From April 1 through July 1, Maricopa County gained nearly 27,800 new voters. The registration breakdown: 50 percent independents, 36 percent Democrats, 13 percent Republicans and less than 1 percent Libertarians.

Pinal County gained nearly 15,600 new voters during that time. The breakdown: 46 percent Democrats, 28 percent independents, 26 percent Republicans and less than 1 percent Libertarians.

And while the total number of voters went up across the state, a portion of the increase was offset by lower voter registration numbers in Pima, Mohave and Navajo counties. Arizona has 15 counties.

Arizona Democratic Party Chairman David Waid said the number of new independents and Democrats indicates voters are fed up with the current state of politics.

“People are saying they’re looking for change — and I think that Republicans clearly represent more of the same,” Waid said.

“Some people are going to express that through registering as independents, but clearly a lot of people are sort of expressing that through choosing the Democratic Party.”

The majority of people who register as independents will end up voting for Democratic candidates at election time, because there are few independent candidates on the ballot, he said.

Arizona Republican Party Chairman Randy Pullen offered a different analysis.

“It shows that voters are frustrated with both parties,” he said. “That’s probably a reflection of what’s going on in Congress, in terms of their approval rating being so low.”

Democrats have the majority in both the U.S. Senate and House.

Congress’ approval rating has dropped to 14 percent, according to a national telephone survey released July 20 by the polling firm Zogby International. Other surveys have shown similar results.

The recent Arizona voter registration results shouldn’t be regarded as indicative of a long-term trend in coming months or years, Pullen said.

Secretary of State Jan Brewer attributed the overall surge in new voter registrations to a high interest in the 2008 presidential election.

She also predicted independents will shift to the major parties as they come to realize that registered independents won’t be permitted to vote in the presidential preference elections, which are set for Feb. 26, 2008, in Arizona.

Only Democrats will have a role in selecting among Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama, Bill Richardson and the other Democratic candidates, while only Republicans will be able to choose among John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney and the other Republican candidates.

Independents will have to wait until the general election in November before having to choose among the presidential nominees from each party.

That stands in contrast to the September 2006 primary elections, in which independents were able to vote by asking for a ballot from the party of their choice.

The difference is that the 2006 elections were set up as actual primaries for the U.S. Senate, U.S. House and other races, whereas the February 2008 election is a presidential preference election to nominate candidates.

Brewer said, “I am confident that over the next few months, we will see major increases in recognized statewide party voter registration.”

De Berge dismissed that idea as pure nonsense.

“If you take that step to actually walk away from an existing relationship that you may have had with the party for a long time, that’s not casual. That’s a fairly strong statement of belief,” he said. “They’re not going to move back to the parties until the parties begin to reflect their philosophical points of view.”

Overall, the state has more than 2.6 million voters, split largely three ways. Republicans number more than 1 million voters, comprising 39 percent of the total. Democrats follow with 873,000 voters, accounting for 33 percent. Independents are next with 734,000, for 28 percent. Libertarians number 19,000, for less than 1 percent.