Welcome back to the #weeklywonk. This is my weekly article on election statistics and related topics. These articles give insight into 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. Now that the June primary has been certified we turn our attention to the General Election. There are several towns holding to fill vacancy elections that are contested. This week I look at the largest town in Onondaga County, the Town of Clay.
The Town of Clay has 42,079 active registered as of September 2024. Democrats make up 14,151 (34%), Republicans 12,293 (29%) non-enrolled 12,800 (30%), Conservatives 791 (2%) Working Families 484 (1%) and 1,560 (4%) are in various other not recognized parties. The Town of Clay is broken up into three different Onondaga County legislative districts. The smallest is the fifth legislative district portion that makes up 10% of the active voters (4,105). The second legislative district portion has 42% (17,877) of the voters. The 14th legislative district is the largest and the only district that wholly resides in the town of Clay. It has 48% (20,097) of the voters.
When we look at the partisan trends in Town of Clay, we see the beginning of what might become a Democratic town. The Democrats have gained considerably since 2009 adding 2,046 voters. In the same time period, the non-enrolled have added an outstanding 3,309 voters. The GOP has lost 136 voters since 2009. One of the things I am tracking this year is how subdivisions have changed since the last Presidential election. Democrats have lost sixty-six voters in the Town of Clay and Republicans have lost 413. The non-enrolled continued to gain, adding 1128 voters. So far in 2024 the bulk of new registrations have just started to come in and this data does not reflect registration data in parts of August. There is evidence so far that Democrats have started to see an increase this year and republicans have continued to fall while non-enrolled continue to grow at the fastest rate. We will see if that trend holds at the end of the year.
Taking a look at the partisan makeup of the legislative portions we see a slight blue leaning in two out of the three. The 2nd Legislative district portion on the west side of Clay has a +8.00% Democratic lean and the non-enrolled actually outnumber the GOP. We see a similar ratio in the fifth legislative district portion in the southeast corner of the town with the Democrats having a +6.80% lean and the GOP once again coming in third place. The 14th legislative district is about as even as possible, with Democrats having the smallest of advantage at +0.74% and less than 225 voters separating the Democrats, GOP and Non-enrolled.
With that we check in on the heat map for Town of Clay. For the heat map we look at the forty-six election districts inside the Town of Clay. It may surprise readers that there are only four election districts with a definitive GOP lean in the Town of Clay. Those eds on the heat map are in the pink or red. Another seventeen are considered borderline with purple on the GOP side and lavender on the Democratic side with less than a 5% lean towards either party. Twenty-five of the eds have Democratic lean and are in various shades of blue on the map. That means that 4,175 voters live in GOP election Districts (9.92%). 1. 51 voters live in borderline election districts (38.14%). Finally, the majority of the town, 21,853 voters (51.93%) live in election districts with a Democratic lean.
In the towns, however, you cannot just look at the two major parties. The Conservative party plays a large factor in swinging the population to the right. When looking at the three legislative district portions we see that the 2nd Legislative district swings 1.38% to the right when Conservative and Working Families are accounted for. The fifth legislative district swings the largest, 1.97% to the right, and drops that portion down to a borderline Democratic district. The 14th legislative district swings 1.39% to the right and actually flips to becoming a borderline GOP district.
Finally, we look at the comparative races and how they perform in the Town of Clay vs. the county overall. In general, the Town of Clay performs 5-7% more republican than Onondaga County as a whole. In 2022 Governor Kathy Hochul won the County with 53.78% but only garnered 48.86% of the vote in Clay (-4.92%). In the 2021 Supreme Court race Anthony Brindisi got 43.74% of the town of Clay vote -8.76% than his Onondaga County total (52.50%). President Biden’s 2024 race performed the best of our comparative race inside the Town of Clay, actually winning it with 54.71% of the vote but that was -4.17% worse than his Onondaga County total (58.88%). County Clerk Emily Essi’s win in 2023 was a surprise however she did the worst in the Town of Clay with just 43.37% of the vote and -6.77% of her county total (50.14%) However that was a 0.57% better result than 2019. Finally, I added the 2023 Town Supervisor race in the comparative results. Democrats did not do particularly well in that race, with just 41.15%. However, that is a significant improvement (+6.23%) from the 2021 race for Town Clerk that was also held town wide.
The only races inside the Town of Clay are for the Town Board. This is a vacancy seat as the former Town Board member, Kevin meeker, left the board to take the 2nd County Legislative seat. David Capria, who ran for Town Supervisor, is running for the Town Board seat. He is hoping his name recognition from the previous race and the general enthusiasm and higher turnout in a Presidential election will propel him to victory in the fall.
That is, it for this edition of the #weeklywonk. Nest week I take a break from the political subdivisions and take a look back at 2023. Our annual report from 2023 has been released and I will look at the data slides in it to see how the Onondaga County Board of Elections stacks up to the rest of the state in terms of resources and performance. As always you can subscribe to dustinczarny.com for all content and election news updates.
Dustin M. Czarny 