One last mini blog on the November election. Today we will look at how people voted in 2025, and by that, I mean which method they chose to vote. This breaks down into three main categories: Early, Mail, Election Day.
Total Voters: 93,421
Early Voters: 17,326 (18.55%)
Mail Voters: 4,909 (5.25%)
Election Day: 71,186 (76.20%)
Election Day is obviously still the most popular option, but the Early Voting portion is growing. Each of these categories has two subcategories in them.
Early Voters: 17,326 (In-Person 17,218, Affidavit 108)
Mail Voters: 4,909 (Absentee 3,322, Early Mail Ballot 1,587)
Election Day: 71,186 (In-Person 70,601, Affidavit 585)
For in person Voting such as Early and Election Day you have in-person voters and declaration of facts voters. In-person voters use the machine, while those with registration issues must complete affidavits and vote using an envelope. Affidavit ballots are examined once Election Day has passed. Mail balloting has two distinct categories: Early Mail Ballot and Absentee. The main difference in these types of mail ballots is Early Mail Ballots are yearly requests that do not need an excuse, and Absentees use excuses to vote, mostly permanently, by mail.
As we have done in other posts, let us look at how the parties chose to vote.
Early Voters: 17,326 (Dem 8602 49.65%, GOP 4474 25.82%, CON 248 1.43%, WFP 30 .17%, UNA 3927 22.93%)
Mail Voters: 4,909 (Dem 2464 50.19%, GOP 1323 26.95%, CON 73 1.49%, 22 0.45%, UNA 1027 20.92%)
Election Day: 71,186 (Dem 30347 42.63%, GOP 21873 30.73%, CON 1345 1.89%, 263 0.37%, UNA 17915 25.17%)
One of the problems with comparing party performance is the makeup of Onondaga County. Over the last ten years Onondaga County has settled with a solid Democratic plurality. In fact, the GOP has now fallen to third place behind the non-enrolled. In the November Election, out of the 313,824 voters 116,353 were Democrat (37.08%), 83,907 Republican (26.58%), 5,298 Conservative (1.66%), 1606 Working Families 0.51%), and 106,687 (34.00%) in the unaffiliated category.
So, to see how a party performs when it comes to voting method you really need to see how a party performs when compared against the enrollment. We expect Democrats to outnumber the GOP and Unaffiliated because they have the raw numbers. For this post, I am going to subtract the turnout in a voting method by party by that party’s enrollment. This will give us a quick look at how parties performed.
Early Voters: Dem +12.57%, GOP -0.94%, CON -0.23%, WFP -0.34%, UNA -11.07%
Mail Voters: Dem +13.11%, GOP +0.19%, CON -0.17%, WFP -0.06%, UNA -13.08%
Election Day: Dem +5.55%, GOP +3.97%, CON +0.23%, WFP +0.14%, UNA -8.83%
We can see similar patterns for both Early In person voting and Mail voters. Democrats over performed their enrollment stats while the GOP remains remarkably stable. In fact, GOP, CON, and WFP are not that far off their enrollment numbers for both Mail and Early voting. Matching Democrat over performance is Unaffiliated underperformance. Both in Mail voting and Early voting the Unaffiliated tended to participate much less, which is normal as partisan voters, especially in odd years, tend to turn out better than unaffiliated.
Election Day is slightly different. Here we see Democrats also turning out at a higher rate than enrollment though by a lesser amount. The GOP also had a decent higher turnout, but not as much as previous over performances. The Unaffiliated did a little better on Election Day, but still well under enrollment rates.
Thus, one of the stories of the Election is the Democrats used alternative voting such as Early and Mail to over perform their enrollment. By banking votes early, they were able to pivot to non typical odd election year voters and expand their electorate. The GOP did not ignore Early and Mail in voting, but they seemed to have relied on past strategies for Election Day surge. Unfortunately for them the GOP electorate was unenthused, and they decided not to show up. This was the surge seen throughout the country this last election as well as Onondaga County. This is why Democrats were able to take advantage of the wave and flip so many GOP held seats.
In December I will restart my Weekly Wonk series which will go back to Wednesdays. I plan to start this on Wednesday December 10, 2025, with my traditional 2-part series looking back at the 2025 General election with charts and data. I then will resume my weekly look at political subdivisions as we get ready for the huge 2026 election, the first year where the Even Year Election law will start to take effect.
Dustin M. Czarny 