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(Wyoming News Service) The number of Wyoming voters registered as Democrats is at a low point and there are few candidates with the party on the ballot. As Election Day approaches, the party is hoping to rally its membership.

In Wyoming, Republicans hold the state's top five offices and have supermajorities in both chambers of the Legislature.

Maggie Mullen, state government and politics reporter for WyoFile, said there has been a trend of people who identify as Democratic or progressive who are choosing to register as Republican, as the state's Republican Party itself has fractured over the last few years.

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"For a lot of them, they feel like that's where the contested races are or that's where they feel like their voice might be heard," Mullen explained. "So, the Democratic Party is now trying to encourage them to come back."

According to the latest numbers from the Secretary of State, of the nearly 140,000 voters in Wyoming, fewer than 27,000 are registered Democrats, or roughly 11 percent. Wyoming Democratic Party Chair Joe Barbuto wrote in an op-ed, efforts to "moderate the GOP" by voting on their ballots have not worked. He also wrote: "Democrats, it's time to come home."

Mullen pointed out people are sometimes surprised to learn a major political party in the state is defined not by how many voters are registered with the party but by how its candidates perform. This year, the status of the Wyoming Democratic Party rides on the race for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

"There's also a lot of precedent for that," Mullen emphasized. "There have been many elections where it's just come down to one race and they've managed to pull it off pretty handily."

Democrat Kyle "El" Cameron needs to get at least 10 percent of the vote against Republican incumbent Congresswoman Harriet Hageman to keep the Wyoming Democratic Party a major party in the state. The general election is Nov. 5.

This story based on original reporting by Maggie Mullen of WyoFile as part of the Rural News Network, an initiative of the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN), supporting more than 475 independent, nonprofit news organizations.