The state doesn't appear to have an ancestral democratic domination like many areas in the south, so why are there so many registered democrats there?
Oklahoma abandoned the Democratic party a lot earlier than other Southern states in Presidential elections. But local offices were still competitive between democrats and republicans despite that. As with the national geographic realignment and the Southern local parties. The local branch declined eventually but a lot slower than the national democratic party. However a lot of people who registered democrats who might not of voted democrats they changed registration a lot slower than for example neighboring Texas which also used to have a democratic plurality of the registered voters. And thats mainly because the process in Oklahoma was for a long time having to go to a court house to change registration which for many people wasnt worth the process. However if i hear this right, the state government made it a lot easier and the number of registration changes to the GOP from longtime republican voting registered dems is going really fast which made the registration difference from double digits to single digits as of current.
Except that Texas doesn't register people with parties.
But in terms of primary participation, yes, Democratic primary turnout was usually higher than Republican primary turnout in Texas up until the 2000s.
Also, it is interesting to note that when Texas Republicans tried to ram through a massive Gerrymandering of state districts, that Texas Democrats fled over the border to Oklahoma...
It was actually kind of a legendary action from an historical perspective, and things got a bit crazy when the Texas Rangers were deployed to fetch Dem lawmakers out of their hotel in Oklahoma...
http://www.voanews.com/a/a-13-a-2003-05-15-27-texas-67309472/381313.html
Interestingly enough, historically both Texas and Oklahoma used to have the most active Socialist support way back in the '20s and '30s.
-Texas's 2003 redistricting wasn't gerrymandering; it was simply removing an archaic highly pro-Democrat gerrymander.
The maps passed in 2001 were agreed to by a divided legislature (Democratic House, Republican Senate) and a Republican governor (Rick Perry). If it was a "pro-Democrat" gerrymander, that's more of an indictment of the competence of Perry and the Republicans than it is any perfidy on the Democrats' part.
In pre-2003 Texas, you could have Democrats get a majority of CDs while losing the statewide House PV for the same reason Democrats today can win a presidential vote by 2% but lose the EC. Geography, geography, geography.
-Bush 2000 was the first presidential election in which the four-county Dallas metro area was more Democratic than the surrounding rural counties. That pattern has only grown stronger since.
Of my many sins, overestimating Perry's competence is not one of them.
