Trump and Clinton.jpg

Whether it's love for one candidate or hatred for the other, voters are showing they're interested in the race between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. (Advance composite photo)

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. - More than twice as many Staten Islanders registered to vote so far this year than the same time period four years ago during the last presidential election cycle, a trend that is also seen in citywide voter registration numbers.

According to numbers from the city Board of Elections, from January to the first week of September this year, 11,873 Staten Islanders registered to vote. That's compared to 5,623 during the same time period in 2012 -- less than half.

During the same time in 2008, 8,002 Staten Islanders registered to vote, marking a 48 percent increase this year.

Citywide, 274,259 people registered to vote so far this year, compared to 134,900 in 2012 and 158,221 in 2008.

With all the attention paid to the presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, it should come as no shock that voters are getting in gear, one analyst said.

Evan Siegfried, a Republican political strategist and commentator who supports Clinton over Trump, notes "There has been a lot of interest on both sides of the aisle."

When he was still running, Bernie Sanders "made an aggressive play for New York and tried to register as many voters as he could," which could partly explain the large increase in voter registrations.

But there were also several special elections recently wherein local party committees and candidates pushed to enroll new voters.

"That certainly played a factor," said Siegfried, the author of a new book "GOP GPS: How to Find the Millennials and Urban Voters the Republican Party Needs to Survive."

But high voter turnout isn't directly correlated with increased enrollment.

"The question is how many of these new voters will actually go out and vote on election day," Siegfried said.

Speaking specifically about Staten Island, the political strategist expects plenty of voters will come out for Trump, if the primary is any indication.

And because Trump has a home-grown representative here who has been the campaign's face in the borough.

"Joe Borelli and team have a good infrastructure set forth on Staten Island that is capable of turning out the voters," he said.

Richard Flanagan is head of the political science department at the College of Staten Island and co-author of "Staten Island: Conservative Bastion in a Liberal City."

He first considered a surge in Trump support on Staten Island partly accounting for the rise in voter numbers but realized that wouldn't explain the increase citywide.

But he pointed to Alan Abramowitz, a political science professor at Emory University, who has written about what drives voters more than anything.

"People these days are driven more by their intense dislike of their candidate," Flanagan said. "It's a hypothesis that is plausible."

He agreed with Siegfried that Sanders registering people to vote could account for part of the spike.

Either way, Flanagan attributes some of it to the GOP candidate.

"Trump's leaving an imprint, that's for sure."