An Analysis of NYC Primary Results

Gatemouth did an excellent job analyzing and commenting on the Primary election results. However, he was limited by having only Assembly District returns. I have now obtained the results by E.D. so can try to look a little more deeply into some of the results.

10th CD & 11th CD

In the 10th CD, Congressman Ed Towns won a narrower than expected victory. Towns received 19,469 votes (47%) to Councilman Charles Barron’s 15,345 (37%) and Assemblyman Roger Green’s 6,237 (16%).

The race to replace Congressman Major Owens in the 11th was won by Councilwoman Yvette Clarke – 15,711 votes 31% to Councilman David Yassky’s 13,928 (27%) – State Senator Carl Andrews – 11,685 (23%) and Chris Owens – 9,971 (19%).

While both districts have Black majorities (I’m not breaking any news here) both have potential significant numbers of White voters.

Based on past campaigns, Prime New York has designated EDs in Brooklyn as “Brownstone” (where a large number of liberal Whites live) and “Orthodox” (where most voters are Orthodox or Hasidic Jews).

Here are the Primary results from those EDs for the 2 races:

Brownstone

Barron              1,970

Towns              1,707

Green               1,138


Yassky             8,043

Owens             4,885

Clarke              2.201

Andrews           1,764

It appears that the issue surrounding Ratner do help Barron & Owens in these EDs (which are not exclusively White). Both Green & Andrews have a number of these EDs in their Senate & Assembly Districts.

Orthodox

Towns              3,547

Green               327

Barron              250

 

Yassky             1,043

Andrews            625

Clarke              431

Owens             241

Another interesting way to look at these races is to see how the candidates did in their own Senate, Assembly & Council Districts. Here they are:

 

Barron Council District

Barron              5,135

Towns              3,774

Green               799

 

Green Assembly District

Barron              2,007

Towns               1,671

Green             1,344

Andrews Senate District

Andrews            6,981

Clarke              6,856

Yassky             5,636

Owens             4,447

Yassky Council District

Yassky             2,692

Owens             1,630

Clarke              614

Andrews            481

Clarke Council District

Clarke              4,448

Andrews            2,834

Yassky             1,522

Owens             1,363


Note that there is some overlap here as voters can be in both Andrews SD & Clarke’s CCD, for example.

13th SD

State Senator John Sabini won a close race against Councilman Hiram Monserrate 6,336 (51%) to 6,094 (49%).

Here I think the interesting way to look at this is to see how Monserrate did in his Council District (the 21st) and Sabini, and ex-Councilman did in his (25th)

Monserrate Council District

Monserrate            3,545

Sabini                     1,947

Sabini Council District

Sabini               4,241

Monserrate            2,471

 25th SD

State Senator Martin Connor with 11,459 votes (55%) defeated Ken Diamondstone’s 9,238 (45%).

As Gatemouth has pointed out, Connor barely carried the Brooklyn portion of the district 3,864-3806.

The 2 areas where Connor did the best were the 2 different parts of the district that are dominated by Orthodox Jews. In the area of the Lower East Side known as Grand Street, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s base, Connor won 1,363 to 522.  In the Williamsburgh portion of Brooklyn, home to the Satmar community, Connor won by an eye-popping 1,612 to 153.

2nd Civil Court (Manhattan)

The narrow victory of Margaret Chan resulted in numerous comments, charges and counter-charges of the blogs. I'm not going to get into any of that.

Chan won by 145 votes, receiving 5,278 votes (41.4%) to David Cohen’s 5,133 (40.2%) and Andrea Masley’s 2,352 (18.4%).

Chan’s base obviously was the Asian vote. To try to see how they actually voted, I selected every ED where Asian surnamed voters were over 20% of the total registered voters. In these EDs, the results were Chan 1,036 - Cohen 352 - Masley 222.

Cohen’s base was the same as Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s, Grand Street. In those EDs, the results were Cohen 1,323 - Chan 392 – Masley 148.

So, if only the 2 bases voted, Cohen would have won. However they are not the only parts of the polyglot district. Chan won because she beat Cohen among the large Hispanic Housing Authority projects and the parts of the district in the East & Central Village. She did not win solely because of the Asian vote.

24th SD Republican Primary

Councilman Andrew Lanza defeated former County Leader Robert Helbock with 53% of the vote - 3,825 to 3,329. In Lanza’s own Council District, his margin was much bigger as he received 66% of the vote – 2,220 to 1,165

Next time, I’ll look at some of the Statewide Primary contests.



Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 10/23/2006 - 3:25pm.
Am I missing something? How did Owens get more votes in Brownstone Brooklyn than he did in the entire election?

Submitted by Jerry Skurnik on Mon, 10/23/2006 - 3:48pm.
Thanks for pointing out the error. I've made the correction to the post. I have no idea what I did wrong, since the Yassky number stayed the same but the others went down,

Submitted by Gate (not verified) on Mon, 10/23/2006 - 5:06pm.

A few comments do seem in order, but first, you need to do one at least one more correction: You've transposed the Green and Towns numbers in the 57th AD. I caught this because it was quite apparent from the AD totals, and shouldn't have changed with the more detailed results. However, since you've obviously had a few data entry problems, I might re-check my other numbers as well.  

10th CD: Your new Brownstone numbers seem to confirm my theory that Barron won the 57th AD based upon his strength among white voters. The results within Barron's Councilmanic are further proof of my conclusion that if Barron beat Towns among black voters, it was almost entirely because of his strength in his home base. BTW, I think you should run numbers on how the two of them did in black EDs (and then minus out the black Brownstone EDs and see if that changes anything).

11th: Your conclusion that the impact of Atlantic Yards worked in Owens' favor is a bit less true now that you've corrected the numbers, but still true enough. Your Ortho numbers seem a little low. Is this Midwood and Crown Heights alone, or does it include the more mixed areas of Flatbush and Kensington? Have you re-checked the math here?

Lower East Side: Interesting to note that Grand Street vote for the Silver-backed candidates is almost exactly the same in both races. The 1300 and change is a drop from past years (as is the 1600 odd Hasidim in Williamsburg), but is still a formidable block.

I previously noted that Cohen beat Chan by 234 votes in Silver's AD. Cohen's margin in "Grand Street plus Chinatown" was 247, meaning that among the approximately 2000 voters unaccounted for in the 64th AD, Chan won by 13 votes (her victory came elsewhere). The only thing that puzzles me is that there were actually 2000 votes outside of Grand Street in the 2nd Municipal Court District in EDs where Asian surnamed voters accounted for less than 20% of the voters. Who are these people? Outside of the Village View and Masryk areas, I didn't think they existed (since BPC, Souhtbridge and Wall Street are not in the 2nd MCD).

Your Grand Street numbers mean Connor won the non-Grand Street areas of the 64th by 3395 to 2420 (58-42). As such, both my alternative theories are confirmed (a) Silver's support is more powerful when one is not running against someone with a Chinese surname, and (b) Connor had strength in the 64th independent of the votes controlled by Silver.   


Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 10/23/2006 - 5:12pm.

Here's an interesting note on those numbers. 

Yassky Council District looks to have had a bit over 5,300 voters who voted, while Clarke's Council district had over 10,000 voters voting.  Is twice as much of Clarke's district in the 11th as Yassky's, or was the voter turnout simply higher there?  I'm thinking this may suggest Clarke's get out the vote effort in her own district was better than Yassky's and maybe this is what turned the race...


Submitted by What's So (not verified) on Mon, 10/23/2006 - 5:44pm.
Clarke had quite a few more constituents in the 11th than Yassky did. Only a portion of Brooklyn Heights is in that CD.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 10/23/2006 - 6:59pm.

Can you breakdown Kavanagh vs. Friedman in the 74th? Dear vs. Parke? More races!


Submitted by Gate (not verified) on Mon, 10/23/2006 - 7:24pm.
Virtually all of Clarke's Councilmanic was in the Congessional District. Yassky had a good size piece of Brooklyn Heights, small pieces of Boerum Hill and Carroll Gardens, two NYCHA projects in Gowanus (not a particular area of strength) and a hunk of the Slope; all told a good deal less than half of his Councilmanic.
Submitted by ROCK (not verified) on Tue, 10/24/2006 - 8:42am.
WHEN YOU TAKE THE ORTHODOX VOTE ALONE, YOU WILL SEE THAT CHARLES BARRON WON THE BLACK VOTE. THE PLURALITY TOWNS HAD HERE WAS OVER 3000. I REST MY CASE.

Submitted by Jerry Skurnik on Tue, 10/24/2006 - 8:54am.

I have corrected the Towns- Green numbers for 57 AD. And I have re-ordered the listing in the Clarke Council District so that is in the correct order. Sorry for the typos.

I do not know the different neighborhoods of Brooklyn as well as Gatemouth does. Most of them are just numbers on a page to me. The list of Orthodox EDs that Prime New York maintains is a result of information given to us over the years by "Jewish Desks" of various campaigns, so I don't know if mixed communities that Gatemouth asks about are included. My guess is that they are not.

In the Chan-Cohen and Connor-Diamondstone race, the EDs I listed as Grand Street are the EDs of the Truman Democratic Club, Silver & Cohen's home club.

The parts of 64 AD left after these EDs and the 20%+ Asian EDs are the Housing Authority projects and other areas that are south of the 74th AD.

Regarding turnout differences between Clarke & Yassky's Council District -

In Clarke's there are 52,757 Democrats, so the turnout was 19%.

In Yasskey's, there 20,526 so the turnout was 26%.



Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 10/24/2006 - 4:51pm.
So Jerry. of you are advising David Yassky or Chris Owens, and looking at these numbers in detail, do you advise them to run against Yvette in two years?  Is there a base there either of them could build on?
Submitted by Gate (not verified) on Tue, 10/24/2006 - 4:59pm.

"WHEN YOU TAKE THE ORTHODOX VOTE ALONE, YOU WILL SEE THAT CHARLES BARRON WON THE BLACK VOTE. THE PLURALITY TOWNS HAD HERE WAS OVER 3000. I REST MY CASE." Rock

Let's see,

Towns' plurality in the Otho EDS: 3297

Towns' Districtwide plurality: 4124

Barron's plurality in Brownstone areas: 263

Likelihood that Barron's plurality in the Brownstone areas (plus more) came from white people: 95%

Towns plurality subtracting Ortho and Brownstone EDs: 1089

Number of other white votes remaining in the district: probably less than 1000.

Verdict: Case dismissed for insufficient evidence.    


Submitted by Gate (not verified) on Tue, 10/24/2006 - 5:16pm.

I would have sworn that those NYCHA projects on the East River near Chinatown were over 20% Asian; guess they aren't citizens yet.

As to the Orthos in the 11th, you credit Yassky with 1043 Ortho votes. Well, the CD's portion of the 45th and 48th are virtually entirely Orthodox, and between them Yassky 1242 votes. And Yassky got another 1242 in the 43rd AD, most of which must have come from Hasidim; and that doesn't even touch the 44th, where over half the votes came from a Senate District where, within the 44th, Noach Dear got a majority (and there were other EDs from an all Ortho area of Carl Kruger's SD). We know your figures included some of Crown Heights, because you credit Andrews with 625 Ortho votes, and he only got 182 votes between the 45th and 48th. I have to believe your numbers here are seriously in error, and do not include all the predominately Ortho EDs, let alone the mixed ones.      


Submitted by ROCK (not verified) on Tue, 10/24/2006 - 7:30pm.
TOWNS won the Latino vote also ; don't forget.

Submitted by Jerry Skurnik on Wed, 10/25/2006 - 9:51am.

As I said earlier, the list of EDs I include as Orthodox was compiled based on lists given to me over the years by campaign operatives expert in this field. Populations change over the years and I would not dispute Gatemouth's point that I probably missed some of the EDs. I will be happy to add or subtract EDs from my Orthodox file (as I've done in the past) when I get new information. In fact, as a result of this  back & forth, such an expert on the Orthodox community has contacted me and I expect to improve the list.

As regards, my advice to Owens and Yassky regarding challenging Clarke in two years. My business interests preculude from ever telling a potential customer not to run for office. However the past succes rate of challenges to non-indicted incumbent Democratic Congressmembers in NYC should not encourage anybody.  


Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 11/02/2006 - 11:15pm.

I teach a voting rights seminar and am in desparate need of an analysis of the 11 CD race and how it broke down on racial lines.  If someone has already done this analysis, I'd be most grateful if you could post it or send it to me directly.  There are glimpses of these data in the some of the earlier blog entries but nothing that comprehesively deals with ED by ED or AD by AD returns along with the racial breakdowns of those districts.  If this hasn't already been done, any leads on where to find published ED or AD election returns and demographics would be appreciated as well.  Feel free to contact me offline at janaisn@yahoo.com.  Thanks!


Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 11/14/2006 - 1:22pm.
I'd be interested in seeing a further breakdown of the vote in the Sabini-Monserrate race. Much was made about this being a majority Latino district. However as a former longtime resident, my instinct tells me that the African-American portion of the district (Jeff Aubrey's Assembly District) put Sabini over the top. Aubrey and Borough President Helen Marshall (who formerly held Monserrate's Council seat) both endorsed Sabini.
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