Voting Trends in Upstate New York
Ξ May 25th, 2011 | → Comments Off | ∇ Politics |
A couple of weeks ago, I had a bit of a wonkish conversation over the voting trends of upstate New York. Conventional wisdom holds that this area is pretty red – a northern version of the deep south. However, my impression over the last five years is that New York is actually more of a work-class purple, shifting blue.
NY-26 and NY-23 both are now controlled by Democrats, after decades of Republican control. In 2010, despite historic pro-GOP results nation wide, NY-24 and NY-25 barely broke for the Republicans and could easily swing back. Upcoming redistricting promises to make the situation even worse for the New York State Republicans, as Democrats dominate state government, and the Republican Party has never recovered after the end of the Pataki administration, and been largely devoid of the ability to put forward credible state-wide candidates.
Demographics have a great deal to do with the issue – New York is shedding population, largely due to poor economics and high taxes. Those capable of leaving the area tend to be Republicans, a situation that hurts doubly when congressional district contraction occurs and gerrymandering results in fewer Republican safe/competitive seats (already almost non-existent in NY).
It could be said I’m reading into NY-23 and NY-26 too much, but Bill Owens in NY-23 won a straight-up election in 2010 in the face of the Republican tide. Even with the shadow of Doug Hoffman, given that he did not run that year, the seat should have been an easy Republican win, given the decades of Republican control under McHugh and Gerald Solomon and the general Republican sentiment of the election. In NY-26, the Democrat, Hochol managed to beat the Republican by a fairly significant margin, offsetting to a great degree the fact that the third-party run by a (widely regarded as fake) tea-party candidate siphoned off votes from the Republican. Over the last week, national Republican and conservative apparatuses had gotten out the word about the tea-party candidate, so as to minimize the impact, but the margin of victory of the Democrat can’t be dismissed.
As a side note, much will be made of whether or not NY-26 hold any significance nationwide. I don’t think so – there was simply too much local politics involved in the race to draw a meaningful lesson, and it was a single congressional race – it simply doesn’t significance as the 2009 elections did as bellwethers for 2010. I do, however, think it holds significance for the state of the NY Republican Party – that is that the GOP still can’t organize to win elections that it should win. In 2008, the Republican congressional delegation was nearly wiped out. I expect that trend to continue.
