As of April 9, nearly 83,000 Buncombe County residents — about 40.3% of all voters — had registered as unaffiliated, compared with about 75,000 Democrats (36.5%), 46,000 Republicans (22.4%) and 1,700 Libertarians (0.8%). The shift represents an unaffiliated increase of nearly 15 percentage points since the 2008 primaries.