Welcome back to the #weekywonk. Each week I take some dice into the electoral and registration data that makes up the political subdivisions in Onondaga County and New York State. As we near spring there is an odd tradition that many people don’t know about, the March village elections. In Onondaga County there are 5 villages holding elections on March 19th, Baldwinsville, Fabius, Fayetteville, Marcellus, and Minoa. Only two villages have opposition slates of candidates, Fayetteville, and Baldwinsville, as well as propositions to move their elections. I will be focusing on those villages for this article.
We start off in the village of Fayetteville which I have featured before in this space. As of the February enrollment pull the village of Fayetteville has 3,310 voters. Democrats make up 41% of the electorate and Republicans just 26%. In fact, the non-enrolled have overtaken the GOP with 28% of the electorate. There are five election districts inside the village of Fayetteville. Manlius 17 is thew biggest with 782 voters representing 23% of the village. However, all 5 election districts are evenly distributed between 17-23% of the voters.
The village of Fayetteville is following a pattern that other densely populated areas such as Cities and other villages. The village itself is getting more and more Democratic. Since 2012 Democrats have gained 279 voters whole the GOP has lost 228 voters. The non-enrolled voter base has also grown significantly by 145 voters. In 2012 the GOP had a small 16 vote advantage in the village over Democrats, however in 2014 Democrats took the lead for good and it has grown to 507 vote advantage today. The Gop continued to decline rapidly. The non-enrolled barely overtook the GOP in 2021 and there are signs this year that that will continue to be the case as the GOP is now clearly in third place.
In Fayetteville the Democrats are running candidates on the Democratic line so it is helpful to look at the comparative races to see how Fayetteville responds to partisan lines. This year the four races I will use as comparison are the 2020 Presidential race, the 2021 Supreme Court Race, the 2022 Governor’s race, and the 2023 County Clerk race. I will also look at the 2019 county clerk race for a comparison of how Democrats have grown or lost some advantages in a district as both 2019 and 2023 County Clerk races were some of the closest races in the last few years. The last Presidential Joseph Biden won Fayetteville with 66.96% of the vote, 8.08% ahead of how the rest of Onondaga County voted. This is generally true of all the comparative races. Brindisi won Fayetteville in the 2021 Supreme Cour race with 60.30% of the vote, +7.8 points ahead of his Onondaga County rate. Governor Hochul won Fayetteville with 64.30% of the vote, +10.52% ahead of her Onondaga County rate. Finally County Clerk Emily Essi won Fayetteville with 59.16% of the vote, 5.38% ahead of her Onondaga County rate, and +4.13% improvement from the 2019 race.
Turning our attention to Baldwinsville, this is one of the biggest villages with 5307 voters. Baldwinsville is the definition of a split village. Not only is it split evenly in terms of partisanship, but it is also the rare village that straddles in two different towns, Lysander, and Van Buren. Republicans have a slight advantage in Baldwinsville with 33% of the vote to the Democrats 31%. Non-Enrolled sit in 3rd place with 29% of the vote. The Lysander portion of Baldwinsville (3372) is substantially larger that the Van Buren portion (1935). The five eds range from 15% of the vote (Van Buren 3) to 26% of the vote (Lysander 7).
The Baldwinsville races are not running on partisan lines, so I won’t do comparative races, but we can still get a peek at how Baldwinsville is trending. This is my first look at Baldwinsville as it is the first time the Onondaga County Board of Elections has run its elections. However, since we did not run their elections, I also have limited data for them, only going back to 2021. In this short interval both major parties’ lost voters in the post 2020 environment (GOP -44, Dem -34) though the Democrats lost less. This Slightly closed the gap from -101 o -91. The story here is that the non-enrolled is all the growth in Baldwinsville, growing by 124 voters.
In the last slide I wanted to give some data regarding the moving of villages to November elections. In 2016 The Onondaga County Board of Elections made moves to make it possible for all villages to move to November elections if they chose to do so. If a village moved their election, they could save 100% of the cost of running an election as opposed to March and June. Baldwinsville and Fayetteville have propositions to do just that this year. Some of the opposition to the propositions have said village elections would get lost and that less voters would vote in them. That, statistically speaking, is not true. Since 2016 four villages oved their elections from March to November, Solvay, E. Syracuse, and Tully in 2016 and Elbridge in 2019. I decided to compare votes cast in the races before the change and after. This is not voter turnout, but actual votes cast in village wide races. All four villages not only saw dramatic turnout in the first election, but it was also sustained after. Solvay saw a +38.64% increase in its Mayoral elections. E. Syracuse saw a +88.27% increase in its Mayoral election. Even non-contested elections had massive turnout increases. Tully and Elbridge had +762.5% and +812% increases. This may be why Syracuse.com issued an editorial today endorsing the moves to November, as they did in 2016.
In addition to the propositions the villages of Baldwinsville and Fayetteville have competitive races this Tuesday. Manlius Democrats have put up Sara Bollinger for Mayor and Casey Cleary Hammerstadt for village trustee. There are three candidates on the Brighter Baldwinsville line challenging the incumbent Village party for trustee in Baldwinsville. Polls in Fayetteville are open from 6am to 9pm. Polls in Baldwinsville are open noon till 9pm. You can find more information including sample ballets at onvote.net.
That does it for this #weeklywonk. Next week I will once again produce the #weeklywonk over the weekend recapping the village elections that take place on Tuesday. In the coming weeks we will look at the Presidential Primary turnout in April as well as the political subdivisions holding elections in the general elections this November. In the meantime, you can subscribe to dustincarny.com to all content and election news updates. It is always free and no ads as it is part of my public outreach. Subscribe here.
Dustin M. Czarny 