Welcome back to the #weeklywonk. This is my weekly article on election statistics and related topics. These articles give insight in the data and statistics that make up our home, Onondaga County and New York State. Each week I investigate a different election event or political subdivision that can give us clues into our rich and diverse electoral tapestry. This week I finish my 2-week investigation into the recent 2024 June Federal and local primary. Today I focus on Election Day and Overall turnout.
Election Day voting remains the most popular form of voting in New York. We had 22,381 voters in the June 2024 Primary and 16,097 (72%) chose to vote on Election Day. Other forms of voting were Mail Balloting with 2300 voters (10%), Early Voting with 3,878 voters (17%), affidavit voting with 72 voters (1%), and court orders with 5 voters (0%). On Election Day 13,621 voters were Democrat (85%), 2,472 were Republican (15%) and just 4 Conservative voters (0%).
While Election Day voting continues to be the most popular, its vote share is waning. The 16097 Election Day voters was just 71.92% of the overall vote share. This was one of the smaller vote shares since the major election reforms in 2019. Primaries did not start getting Early Voting until 2020. The 20202 June primary was at the height of the pandemic and saw the lowest amount of in person voting on Election Day. However, as the pandemic subsided, and vaccines were introduced we saw a resurgence in Election Day voting in primary. However, we have seen a steady decline in primaries (and general election) of vote share on Election Day. The voters are trending towards using Early Voting and Vote by mail more as we saw with the last #weeklywonk.
Each #weeklywonk on Election Day I like to point out the top ten polling places that had voters on Election Day, what is notable about this listing is 5 of the top 10 polling places were inside the city of Syracuse. This is abnormal as polling sites inside the city are smaller, but a higher concentration of Democrats. Pumped up those numbers. Three of those polling Places (Nottingham High School 311, Erwin First United 299, and Spiritual Renewal Center 287) were in the east side of Syracuse otherwise known as the Mighty 17th ward, the largest concentration of Democrats throughout the county and upstate NY. The other two city sites were Bellevue Heights (269) is on the west side and Valley Vista (204) on the south side. The suburban sites are our usual suspects St. Michael & St. Peter (Onondaga, 300), Skaneateles Fire Department (249), St Joseph’s Parish (Camillus, 233), Immaculate Conception Church (Manlius 228), Skaneateles Presbyterian, & Baldwinsville Public Library (Lysander).
In 2019 we added electronic poll books to every polling place county wide. This not only makes it easier to check in voter it gives us some data that we weren’t ever able to get before, the check-ins by hour on Election Day is one of those stats. We can see that the 2024 June primary, and all primaries, show a definitive pattern. A rising tide of voters between 6am and 10am, The flow then levels off between 10am and 3pm. Starting at 4pm we see our biggest rush as voters get out of work and vote, which lasts until 6pm. From 6pm to 9pm we see a steady decline in check ins until it reaches zero.
The turnout for the June 2024 primary was just 14.79%. We saw 22,381 voters. 129,170 voters who were eligible to vote chose not to. Primaries are closed in New York and 154,551 voters in Onondaga County were not eligible to vote in this primary. Democrats made up 86% of the voters who cast a ballot (19303), Republicans were just 14% (3,056 voters). Conservatives several small primaries that just had 21 voters (<1%). This means Democrats had 16.69% turnout of their eligible voters, Republicans 8.37% of their eligible voters, and Conservatives 21.25% of their eligible voters.
In primaries Democrats tend to outperform Republicans in terms of frequency and turnout. Democrats who are often challengers to incumbents, tend to have a primary of some sort each year. Since 2009 we have had 21 separate primary events where Democrats participated in 19 of them and the GOP just 12. We have not had a year where there was not a primary, even if it is a small one. Notably the June 2024 primary Democrats (16.69%) turned out at nearly double the rate of Republicans (8.37%). The last time that happened was the 2020 combined congressional and presidential primaries.
When looking at turnout by region the City of Syracuse tends to fare better then it does in General Elections. In General election the City of Syracuse lags the suburbs but in primaries the City of Syracuse tends to be more participatory. 4 of the 21 primary events since 2009 have been City of Syracuse only events. In 9 of the primaries that were there were both suburban and city portions, the City of Syracuse outpaced the suburbs. * Of the elections the suburbs outpaced the city. The 2024 June primary was the latter. The City of Syracuse had a turnout rate of 12.33%, the suburbs 15.93% for an overall turnout of 14.79%.
That is, it for this edition of the #weeklywonk. Because of the travel Armageddon and Biden’s decision to drop out this episode is dropping a little late. I plan for my next edition to drop this weekend. We will start to look at the political subdivisions in our county holding elections. We start with Onondaga County as a family court seat is running county wide. As always you can subscribe to dustinczarny.com to get all my content and election news updates.
Dustin M. Czarny 