Democratic Party

Percent of Bernie Sanders Vote, 2022 Assembly Districts

Percent of Bernie Sanders Vote, 2022 Assembly Districts

I have been experimenting with using R to calculate ADP and socialist votes for various political districts. After doing some reading up, it turns out the fastest and easier way to calculate such things is to use VTD centroids and spatially join them against the new districts.

With R, it turns out that can be done with like 10 lines of code to make some pretty nice maps and data, although I did the final map layout in QGIS. Overall, with the enacted Assembly districts, 1/3rd of them voted for Bernie Sanders, mostly upstate. This code took less then 10 seconds to run on my old laptop.

library(tidyverse)
library(tigris)
library(sf)

vt20 <- read_csv('2020vote_vtd.csv')
vt20$GEOID <- as.character(vt20$GEOID)

vtd <- voting_districts('ny', cb=T) %>%
inner_join(vt20, by=c('GEOID20'='GEOID')) %>%
st_transform('epsg:3857')

a22 <- read_sf('/home/andy/Documents/GIS.Data/2022 Districts/NY Assembly 2022.gpkg') %>% st_transform('epsg:3857')

join <- vtd %>% st_centroid() %>%
st_join(a22)

join %>% st_drop_geometry() %>%
group_by(DISTRICT) %>%
summarise(socialist = (sum(SANDERS)/sum(SANDERS,CLINTON))*100) %>%
inner_join(a22, by=c('DISTRICT')) %>%
write_sf('/tmp/socialassm.gpkg')

2022 AD Sanders Vote
1 42.8
2 47.1
3 50.4
4 47.5
5 53.1
6 37.6
7 50.2
8 46.2
9 48.6
10 37.5
11 39.2
12 44.7
13 37.6
14 42.1
15 38.4
16 32.0
17 45.7
18 28.6
19 44.9
20 39.0
21 38.3
22 35.4
23 41.9
24 35.2
25 41.8
26 40.6
27 41.0
28 43.5
29 25.9
30 47.1
31 27.6
32 25.7
33 28.7
34 47.1
35 32.3
36 49.5
37 50.1
38 45.3
39 41.3
40 38.6
41 37.3
42 35.6
43 35.6
44 45.9
45 47.6
46 48.0
47 51.9
48 40.7
49 51.9
50 57.1
51 48.5
52 37.7
53 50.3
54 37.3
55 30.4
56 42.4
57 44.5
58 22.3
59 32.9
60 27.0
61 39.2
62 53.6
63 46.0
64 52.4
65 40.9
66 35.7
67 27.1
68 35.9
69 33.6
70 38.4
71 39.4
72 35.7
73 23.4
74 37.6
75 31.9
76 28.8
77 26.7
78 32.3
79 28.6
80 35.4
81 37.0
82 34.0
83 23.0
84 30.5
85 27.8
86 26.8
87 31.3
88 28.9
89 30.0
90 36.5
91 31.0
92 33.2
93 32.2
94 45.7
95 40.6
96 40.7
97 36.0
98 47.1
99 49.6
100 49.3
101 56.0
102 60.2
103 62.3
104 47.9
105 50.3
106 52.8
107 55.5
108 55.9
109 52.6
110 49.1
111 55.2
112 54.0
113 57.9
114 64.0
115 71.4
116 54.2
117 58.4
118 58.1
119 51.9
120 55.7
121 58.2
122 56.9
123 57.3
124 53.8
125 61.8
126 48.9
127 46.6
128 42.5
129 50.8
130 52.9
131 52.5
132 57.2
133 57.4
134 50.1
135 46.0
136 47.9
137 40.2
138 53.8
139 55.2
140 53.6
141 33.6
142 54.7
143 50.4
144 55.1
145 51.3
146 46.5
147 58.3
148 58.2
149 54.2
150 53.5

Kathy Houchul’s Upstate Problem

Kathy Houchul’s Upstate Problem

New York State rarely elects governors from Upstate, especially not Western NY. The last elected Upstate Governor was either George Pataki or Franklin Roosevelt, depending on what you consider to be Upstate and both lived in the Metropolitan-area, just a short ride on the Metro North to New York City.

There is no law prohibiting Governor’s from hailing from Upstate but the population is heavily downstate, with nearly 7 in ten 10 New Yorkers residing in the metro area, which George Pataki and Roosevelt, along with all other governors in the past century hail from.

Western New York is far from New York City. Not just distance wise but culturally too. It’s becoming more and more Republican too, especially the rural areas. Kathy Houchul doesn’t hail from Buffalo or Niagara Falls, she was a town council member in Hamburg, and she went on to represent a fairly conservative suburban district in Congress with the endorsement of the NRA.

With political polarization these days I doubt many Western NYers will end up crossing party lines to vote for Houchul just because she is a local favorite. She will probably do as well as Cuomo did in Western NY but but not much better. But can she motivate people in New York City to vote for her in the numbers she needs? Or will many democrats just sit this one out, at best indifferent to that sort of conservative Upstater on the top of the ballot? After all, the New York State elections will be largely decided in the suburbs as that is where the most swing voters live.

New York City suburbs are getting bluer although recent off year elections see that trend slowing. Crime is up in the suburbs, especially property crime and nobody wants their hard earned property stolen or damaged. Hometown advantage and decades of knowledge of suburban politics for Lee Zeldin may help him better connect with voters fed up with incumbents in these inflationary times with high gas prices.

A look at how Democrats voted in recent primaries based on the Congressional Districts set forth by the special master

A look at how Democrats voted in recent primaries based on the Congressional Districts set forth by the special master.

2016 Presidential Primary

Congressional District Clinton Sanders Primary Votes Clinton Primary Sanders Primary
1 25,371 22,870 48,254 52.6 47.4
2 30,119 22,017 52,165 57.7 42.2
3 37,393 24,607 62,555 59.8 39.3
4 45,528 26,556 72,636 62.7 36.6
5 57,518 24,006 82,385 69.8 29.1
6 35,116 24,643 60,391 58.1 40.8
7 40,861 38,296 79,803 51.2 48.0
8 50,430 25,750 77,225 65.3 33.3
9 58,049 34,764 93,980 61.8 37.0
10 73,119 49,223 123,436 59.2 39.9
11 26,940 25,118 52,806 51.0 47.6
12 94,720 39,374 135,111 70.1 29.1
13 74,856 43,669 119,811 62.5 36.4
14 46,486 27,755 74,937 62.0 37.0
15 55,863 24,051 80,778 69.2 29.8
16 59,293 26,589 86,259 68.7 30.8
17 44,163 28,773 70,929 62.3 40.6
18 28,058 31,003 37,758 74.3 82.1
19 29,569 42,305 72,303 40.9 58.5
20 36,053 41,527 78,126 46.1 53.2
21 19,371 31,850 51,568 37.6 61.8
22 30,438 29,494 60,439 50.4 48.8
23 27,424 33,267 61,357 44.7 54.2
24 21,028 24,802 37,664 55.8 65.9
25 39,636 36,885 76,913 51.5 48.0
26 45,182 40,935 86,765 52.1 47.2

2018 Gubernatorial Primary

Congressional District Nixon Votes Cuomo Votes Primary Voters Nixon Percent Cuomo Percent
1 9,612 24,837 39,074 24.6 63.6
2 8,600 28,197 36,768 23.4 76.7
3 11,034 32,092 43,853 25.2 73.2
4 9,843 39,412 50,062 19.7 78.7
5 11,014 63,099 74,865 14.7 84.3
6 15,697 35,233 51,890 30.3 67.9
7 35,405 38,493 74,943 47.2 51.4
8 14,035 58,824 74,115 18.9 79.4
9 31,839 63,058 96,527 33.0 65.3
10 59,859 52,835 115,819 51.7 45.6
11 14,629 30,012 45,596 32.1 65.8
12 47,472 63,419 112,452 42.2 56.4
13 35,166 69,194 106,012 33.2 65.3
14 17,560 50,197 68,866 25.5 72.9
15 12,563 56,514 70,111 17.9 80.6
16 16,885 53,164 70,822 23.8 75.1
17 18,861 39,368 59,646 31.6 66.0
18 19,799 28,763 49,318 40.1 58.3
19 24,834 26,213 51,755 48.0 50.6
20 25,597 24,366 52,330 48.9 46.6
21 13,921 14,104 28,476 48.9 49.5
22 15,785 20,801 37,163 42.5 56.0
23 16,011 24,403 41,490 38.6 58.8
24 12,247 14,770 27,330 44.8 54.0
25 18,519 29,005 48,223 38.4 60.1
26 20,244 40,656 62,063 32.6 65.5

 

The new NY 20

I was looking through election data this evening and discovered that the new court drawn NY 20 Congressional District is very friendly to Bernie Sanders style socialists, even more so than the old district. Should lead to some very interesting primaries.