NEW YORK, NY June 01, 2008 —The long presidential nomination battle may be worrying national Democratic officials. But party leaders in New Jersey say excitement about the Garden State's early primary led hundreds of thousands of new Democrats to register. WNYC's Bob Hennelly has more.

Just recently Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee came to New Jersey because it was widely perceived as a swing state. And by the numbers it looked that way with unaffiliated voters, outnumbered both Democrats and Republicans combined. But according to numbers just released in the run-up to the state's Presidential primary Democrats added more than a half-million new voters to their ranks.

Over the same period the GOP drew only by 150,000. Now, statewide, there are 1.7 million Democrats to just a million Republicans. The shift in the landscape comes just as two veteran House Republicans are leaving office giving the Democrats their best shot in a generation to turn Republican Red districts to Democratic blue.

For WNYC, I'm Bob Hennelly.