Welcome to Wonky Wednesday!  Today I start to turn the page on the 2020 election and look ahead to the 2021 elections.  Over the next few months I will take a look at the 19 towns including the City of Syracuse as well as the 17 Onondaga County legislative seats (pictured above).  However we will kick it off today by looking at the overall picture in Onondaga County.  Though no one person is on the ballot countywide I think it will be helpful to take a look at the ever more blue county we live in.

Onondaga County continues to grow our record registration levels post election.  This will likely continue for the next three months.  The initial registration surge post election came from affidavit and court order voters that were added to the rolls.  however we are currently about 12k voter registration forms in backlog as we recover from our late certification.  Some of these are moves and party changes however many of them are new voters and we continue to add 18 year old pre-registered voters each month who age into active voter status.  

We added 15,581 voters in Onondaga County in 2020 as compared to 2019.  This is the highest single year jump since the 2008 election of Barack Obama.  This is not just a one year gain though.  Since 2016 Onondaga County added over 22.5k voters.  This is the most productive voter registration gains since the 2000 presidential election.  Those gains were mainly due to the newly enacted Motor Voter laws which transformed the voting electorate.  The last 4 year gain is quite remarkable and part of a statewide trend to register more voters of the eligible adult population.

Democrats are continuing to strengthen their lead over the GOP in Onondaga County.  The big question is will the enrollment advances that went accelerated after the 2016 Donald Trump election continue at the sharp pace we have seen or will it level off or even reverse.  The other question is can local Democratic candidates in 2021 translate this large enrollment edge into local year victories.  As we saw with our previous dive into turnout, Democrats tend to turn out at less of a rate, specially in local years.  

The final slide deals with the City vs. town share of Onondaga County.  It looks as if the City of Syracuse has stabilized the trend of a steady decline in the percentage of the voter registration in our county.  Since 2009 the City of Syracuse has lost about 2% of the county share, but that took place mostly from 2009 to 2016.  The City of Syracuse kept pace with the large voter registration gains in Onondaga County.  This is specially hard for most urban centers, specially one with a significant college population which has large turnovers.  

Over the next couple of weeks we will take a look at the City of Syracuse in depth and then turn to the Towns of Onondaga County.

Welcome back to Wonky Wednesday, where I dive into some of the data that makes up elections in Onondaga County.  As we wrap up 2020 I continue to reflect on the historic 2020 Presidential election this last November.  One of the hallmarks of this last election was the variety in which voters chose to vote.  Last week I detailed the increase in Vote by Mail or absentee voting and this week I will focus on the explosion of Early Voting in Onondaga County.   Early Voting is still in its infancy in New York state.  The 2020 General election is only the third election to use this convenient way of voting but it already has had a major impact.

Like absentee voting in 2020, Early Voting was dominated by Democrats.  Democrats accounted for over 46% of the Early Voting universe.  This is despite making up just 38% of the enrollment of Onondaga County and 39% of the overall turnout for the 2020 General Election.  Early Voting like Vote by Mail became highly partisan with Democrats gearing their turnout operations towards taking advantage and the GOP resisting this voting tool.

That GOP resistance is well documented in the site selection process of Early Voting with Onondaga County GOP politicians and party leaders organizing against expansion of sites resulting in the bare minimum of 6.  This resulted in long lines during the 2020 election with voters waiting up to 90 minutes at some sites.  The 6 sites (Camillus Fire Station, Clay Town Hall, Dewitt Town Hall, Lafayette Fire Station #1, Armond Magnarelli Center, & Syracuse Community Connections) all saw increased traffic during the General Election.  The suburban voting sites of Camillus, Clay and Dewitt saw the most traffic with the City sites and Lafayette lagging.  However the usage of all sites was dramatically increased with 5 of the 6 sites surpassing on their own the 2019 General total for all sites (8462).

Which leads us into the next stat, the dramatic increased use of Early Voting.  The first election that Early Voting could be used was the 2019 General Election.  During that election 8462 voters used EV which ended up representing 7.86% of the overall vote.  Though some, wrongly, pointed to that number as proof that EV would never be popular, it is worth noting that it was more than double the amount of absentee voters that year (3788).  The next election, the 2020 combined Presidential and local primary, saw a decrease in use of Early Voting.  This was mainly due to the COVID-19 outbreak driving over 60% of the voters to vote by absentee.  However as the 2020 General unfolded, more voters wanted to vote in-person because of fears about the US postal service and the wish to have their vote counted as part of the Election Night totals permeated the electorate.  This resulted in over 59k voters and nearly 25% of the electorate to chose to vote over the 9 days of Early Voting.

Despite staying at the minimum number of sites we were able to make a change that proved to help the voters.  In 2019 the There was a glaring hole in the Southwest corner of Onondaga County as one of the sites was located in Van Buren.  I tried to remedy this by using state money to increase sites and adding a site in Onondaga and Cicero.  This did not happen in either 2019 or 2020.  However we were able to move the Van Buren site to Camillus.  This helped the Southwest corner of our County as Camillus Fire Department became the most popular site.  It also served to even out the usage of all 6 sites, as did increase publicity reminding voters they could travel to other sites that were less busy like Armond Magnarelli Center and Lafayette Fire station.

The usage of Early Voting sites definitely varied by town both in terms of raw numbers as well as percentage of registered voters.  The City of Syracuse led with raw numbers which is expected.  It is the biggest municipality and had two Early Voting sites to choose from.  However when we look at the percentage we see that the little town of Lafayette which had an Early Voting site located in it saw the highest percentage of its voters choose to vote by EV.  In fact Camillus Clay, Dewitt are also amongst the highest percentage, where Syracuse drops down in percentage of its voters.  Urban centers, like Syracuse, tend to lag in turnout overall when compared to large suburbs,  

Proximity to Early Voting site definitely seems to drive usage.  In this crude map of Onondaga County you can see the darker the green the higher the percentage of voters from that town used Early Voting.  The farther away from an Early Voting Center the less percentage a town used Early Voting.  This is why I agree with Syracuse.com, we need to expand Early Voting sites to take advantage of this amazing tool  Lawmakers in Albany are having discussions about raising the minimum sites and I believe it is the right thing to do.  Expansion and well placed sites based on data and not resistance to change will lead to more equity throughout our county, and New York State.