This week’s episode I look ahead to the expected races in the 2026 General Election for Onondaga County. I detail how the even year bill will move county legislature and some town races next year. I also highlight some races that I think are pretty important to watch. Also this week’s trivia question: What is the average age of the Onondaga County voter. Answer coming next week or in my next #weeklywonk. Enjoy.
Welcome back to the #weeklywonk. This is my weekly statistical column on electoral and registration data in Onondaga County and New York. This column is back after a semi-hiatus since late 2024 and I intended to bring this back weekly on Wednesdays going into 2026. This week’s column is launching a little late due to the Christmas holiday and personal travel. But we are back with our third, and final look back at the 2025 Election results. This week I will focus on how Democrats performed in the 2025 election by focusing on who won and where they won.
In our first slide we look at the 4-year election cycle and races that spanned the entire county of Onondaga. This data slide has been a regular feature of my #weeklywonk to combat the old notion that Democrats cannot win county wide. In face Democrats have consistently won on races that span the entire county. This includes races like Congress, NY Supreme Court, and Statewide offices that span the county and go beyond, but the county portion of those races have a definitive blue tinge. In the last 4 years there have been twenty-seven races that have run in the entire county. Twenty-four of those races the Democrats have won the Onondaga County portion of those races by an average of 5.78%. The only races the GOP has won are County Court (Porter 2022), District Attorney (Keller 2023), and County Executive (Kinne 2023). However, because of poorer performances in other portions of districts that run outside of Onondaga County Democrats lost the 2022 Congressional race (Conole), all four 2022 Supreme Court races (Murad, Cagnina, Dillon, Keller) and the 2024 Presidential race (Harris). In 2025 there were only 4 NY Supreme Court races that spanned the entire county. The Democrats secured victories in every Onondaga County area, with such impressive performance that Fortino, Randal, and Dillon w to the 5th Judicial seat. Not shown on here are the 2023 Supreme Court Judicial races where Democrats elected not to put up candidates. We can see by the chart Democrats have not just done well in Onondaga County but there are getting better each year.
Focusing on the 2025 public office races there is a hidden story to this election. The news coverage of the results rightfully focused on the gains Democrats made in Onondaga County. Yet, little attention has been given to the number of uncontested races in Onondaga County for 2025. There were 166 total races on the November ballot. 106 of those races (63.86%) were unopposed, 22 Democratic seats were unopposed by the GOP, but a staggering 75 GOP held seats were unopposed by the Democrats. Democrats did extremely will in the sixty competitive seats winning forty-nine of them for 81.67%. One must ask however how much better the Democrats position could be if they did not leave 45.2% of all seats in Onondaga County unopposed.
Excluding the nine races in villages where not only were there no opposition but no party labels, I wanted to focus on the flips in Onondaga County. There were 157 Partisan races in Onondaga County. Forty of those seats were Democratic holds, where the seat remained in Democratic hands (including the twenty-two unopposed seats). Eighty-five seats were GOP holds, including the seventy-five unopposed seats. There were thirty-two races, only 20.4% that flipped control. Democrats dominated this stat block, flipping thirty-one seats that were previously held by the GOP. The GOP only flipped one seat held by Democrats, the third ward seat in the village of Solvay, one of the smallest political subdivisions in the county. As we will see in the next few charts, the Democratic flips were incredibly consequential.
We start with one of the biggest surprises of the night, but also possibly one of the biggest lost opportunities for the Democrats. Democrats flipped control of the Onondaga County Legislature. Due to the departure of Chris Ryan to the NY Senate, Democratic disadvantage for the Onondaga County Legislature dropped o just 5 Democratic seats to eleven republican held seats. The Democrats contested 5 GOP held seats in 2025 and flipped all of them including retaking OCL 8 and flipping OCL 4, 5, 6, and 10 putting those seats in Democratic control for the first time since dropping to a 17-member board in 2011. The GOP did not bother to put up candidates in Democratic seats of OCL 7, 15, 16, & 17. The GOP gambit for OCL 9 failed and the WFP candidate Nicole Watts who is a registered Democrat won the seat despite not having the Democratic line. Democrats failed to recruit candidates in OCL 1, 2, 3, 11,12, 13 & 14 leaving them unopposed. We just do not know how many of those could have flipped in 2025, but with Democratic victories in Clay, Camillus, and Onondaga we could see paths to victory in many of them in 2026 if a similar environment exists.
Another promising trend and an area where Democrats have continued success from recent years is chief executive officer of each Town (Supervisor) and City (Mayor of Syracuse). The biggest flip is the election of Sharon Owens to be the next Mayor of Syracuse. This puts City Hall back into a Democratic aligned mayor for the first time in eight years as Ben Walsh is a registered independent. The Democrats also held 4 Town Supervisors. Lysander was not up for election, Skaneateles was unopposed, and the Democrats retained control of Dewitt and Manlius. They flipped 5 Town Supervisor seats in Cicero, Marcellus, Pompey, Salina, & Spafford. The GOP held onto one contested seat, the Town of Onondaga/ The Democratic Committees chose to cross endorsed supervisors in Camillus and Geddes, though in Camillus the GOP supervisor declined the Democratic endorsement. The Supervisors in Clay, Elbridge, Fabius, Lafayette, Otisco, and Van Buren. Excluding the City of Syracuse this leaves the nineteen towns with 10 Republican Supervisors, 9 Democratic Supervisors with one of the GOP supervisors (Geddes) owing their election to a Democratic cross endorsement. This is the most parity in Onondaga County executives in modern history.
Control of a town or city is not just the chief executive; it also has to do with a council. We cannot just look at majority control either, as many issues such as bonding and charter changes will need a higher than majority vote. As 2025 started the City of Syracuse Common Council started completely Dominated by the Democratic party and ended that way in 2026. The towns work a little differently though as elected supervisors will sit on the town board to make up a voting majority. Focusing on the towns 2025 saw two town Dewitt and Manlius in total Democratic control with all elected town board members being Democratic and they remain that way in 202. Democrats took effective control of Lysander, Salina, Spafford and Geddes for 2026, breaking the log ja in Lysander that resulted from an unfilled vacancy, taking control of the Geddes town board 4-2 even without the Supervisor, winning Supervisor and a town seat in Spafford making it 3-2, and taking total control of Salina changing it from a board that was only in GOP control 3-2 because of the supervisor to a 5-0 board in 2025. Two other towns, Pompey and Marcellus will enter 2026 in a tied position as a GOP town council elect in Marcellus died before being able to take office and in Pompey the Democrat on the board will become Supervisor leaving a vacancy. Both Camillus and Clay went from all GOP control to Democrats being tied on the town board and only the supervisor making it a GOP edge. Democrats improved their holdings by one on the Skaneateles and Onondaga town boards. Democrats ran for town board positions in Cicero and Elbridge but were unsuccessful, although they did secure some representation through the Cicero supervisor race. They did not run candidates for any town boards in Fabius, Lafayette, Otisco, Tully, or Van Buren. Partisan control of the towns at the beginning of 2026 now stands 5 Democrat, 12 GOP, and two split. Four of these towns will have elections in 2026 that could swing control of the board (Clay & Camillus Supervisors, Marcellus, and Pompey Town Board TFV).
Finally, we look at the Judicial races that were on the ballot in 2025. On one hand the Town Justice races saw the least amount of movement. In fact, the town justice representation stayed the same in 2026 as opposed to the start of 2025. Democrats held onto justice positions in Geddes, Dewitt, and Manlius with all three being unopposed by the GOP, the GOP won a close race for Town Justice in Onondaga keeping it GOP hands, and had uncontested wins in Geddes, Lafayette, Lysander, Salina, Tully and Van Buren. Unmentioned towns had no judicial races this year. The 5th Judicial Supreme Court had four of its 202 members this year. Democrats won three of the four races., This brings Democrats to five sitting members of this large judicial district out of twenty. A Democrat was elected to this seat for the first time since 2020, putting Democrats in their strongest position in this district in years.
That is all for this week’s edition of the #weeklywonk. It also concludes my look back at the 2025 election season> I will now be turning my attention to the registration date for all races on the ballot in 2026, and it is a big year with many town positions and the county legislature moving to even years starting in 2026. Next week I will focus on an overall look at Onondaga County with some big races running countywide in 2026. As always subscribe to dustinczarny.com to get all your election news and content updates.
This week I go over mtop stories for 2025. These stoies focus on stories imortant to myself and ones I think the voters of Onondaga County care about. They are:
1.) Mayor-Elect Sharon Owens victories. 2.) Onondaga County Legislature Democrats take over of the Onondaga County Legislature 3.) The Blue wave washing giving Onondaga County Democratic Committee victories 4.) The despeartion of local GOP tactics 5.) The bounce back of the Onondaga County Board of Elections.
Enjoy and let me know what you think the top stories are.
The #weeklywonk is back. My weekly column on election and registration data in Onondaga County and throughout New York State has been running since the middle of 2020. I took a hiatus for this column for the last part of 2024 and 2025 while I reevaluated what content I wanted to bring to dustinczarny.com. There were occasional columns around elections, but I am happy to say I Am back and doing this weekly for the rest of 2025 and 2026. I have found new ways to present data effectively. This week we continue my three parts look back at the 2025 General Election. Today I bring to you Part 2: How Voters Participated in the 2025 General Election.
For this column I will focus on three main ways voters participated, Early in Person voting, Vote by Mail, and Voting on Election Day. This data brought to you by the official voter turnout starts at the Onondaga County board of Elections which lumps all voters outside of the four major parties with the unenrolled into the Unaffiliated category. Early In Person Voting includes voters who voted at our 10 Early Voting stations during the EV period including regular voters, court orders, and affidavits. 17,326 voters participated with 50% (8,602) who were Democrats, 26% (4,474) who were Republican, 23% (3,972) who were Unaffiliated, 1% (248) Conservative, and >1% (30) Working Families parties. Election Day also has regular voters, affidavit voters, and court orders and totals 71,186 voters. Forty-two percent (30,347) were Democrat, 31% (21,873) were Republican, 25% (17,915) were Unaffiliated. Two percent (1,345) were Conservative, and >1% (263) were Working Families. Vote by Mail voters include Absentee, Early Vote by Mail and UOCAVA/military voters. 4,909 voters participated by mail with 50% (2,464) Democrat. Twenty-seven percent (1,323) Republican, 21% (1,027) Unaffiliated, 2% (73) Conservative, and >1% (22) Working Families Party. Democrats were the plurality of every vote method but were more represented in Early and Vote by Mail voters.
Looking at Early Voting in 2025 we see that it is another example of #earlyvotingisgrowing. As I did last week, I am going to focus on just the local years: 2018, 2021, 2023, & 2025. With four years of Early Voting during off-year elections we really see significant progression. Furthermore, to compare apples to apples I am looking at check-in data here and excluding court orders and affidavits. The Early Voting totals in 2025 of 17,218 which is 18.43% of the overall vote in 2025. Both the raw number and percentage of vote is double what we saw in in the first local year (8,462 7.87%), Significant progress has been made each local year with 2021 (9,727 10.31%) and 2023 (12.680 13.96%) showing growth culminating in the record year we saw in 2025, Early Voting continues to grow in its popularity in local years even if it trails the percentages and numbers in even years.
On the other side of the discussion is Vote by Mail. Unlike Early Voting, the vote by mail has not grown significantly during local years. This dataset analyzes returned ballots, including those rendered invalid because of unresolved technical problems. There were 5,152 ballots returned out of 8,115 ballot requests made in 2025. This resulted in a return rate of 63.49%. These ballots accounted for only 5.51% of the total votes cast. This is like 2023 (5103 out of 8324 61.30% return rate 5.62% of the vote) and significantly less than 2021 (6015 out of 9,438 63.73% return rate and 6.38% of overall vote). The 2021 data seem higher than usual because of the pandemic’s effects that year. In contrast, when EV debuted in 2019, its return rate stood at 66.19% (3,788 returned out of 5,723), and it made up just 3.52% of the total vote—both numbers falling below the projections for 2025. Voting by mail is more popular than when New York changed our Democracy to add more options, but it is not growing at the rate that EV is.
Election Day voters continue to be the most popular form of voting, but it is falling in both numbers and percentage of the vote for local years. Once again, we are looking at voter check-ins and not affidavit or court orders. On Election Day 2025 we had 70,601 voters and it represented 75.6% of the votes. This is the lowest of all four Election Day local years in the modern era. We see a downturn each year with 2023 (72,59*5 80.0%), 2021 (78,564 82.8%) and 2019 (95,352 88.1%) all lining up with a steady and downward progression. More Onondaga County voters are choosing alternative voting choices, specifically Early Voting, during local year elections.
When it comes to partisan choices, we can see that in 2025 how and why Democrats had such a good night last month. When comparing the methods of voting to overall voter registration, Democrats outkicked their coverage. Democrats represent 37.08% of the overall registration in Onondaga County and overshot that registration as they were 12.57% higher for Early Voting, 5.55% for Election Day, and 13.12% for Vote by Mail. The republicans have 26.76% of the registration and did overshoot their representation for Election day by 3.97% but Early voting (-0.93%) and Vote by Mail (+0.19%) were statistically the same as the voter registration rate., Unaffiliated represents 34.00% of the electorate but underperformed in all three voter methods (-11.07% Early Voting, -8.83% Election Day, -13.08% Vote by Mail). Looking at the partisan trends since 2019 we can see 2025 was a reversion back to the norm after a successful Early vote participation by the GOP in 2024. More of the Democratic vote (28.35%) chose Early Voting than the GOP (20.45%)/ With Vote by Mail Democrats (8.12%) were a larger share of their vote than the GOP (6.05%) but even for Democrats this was a bus drop from last year.
This year I am doing a bigger focus on age groups in the Weekly Wonks. As we saw last week the electorate was significantly older than the overall registration of Onondaga County. So, it is no surprise that the older the electorate gets, the more voters use each of the voting methods. However when we look at the percentage of the age groups vote and the method they choose there is one surprising detail The two oldest groups 71+ (87.16%), 61-70 (73.87%), 51-60 (81.06%) had the least percentage of their vote choosing Election Day. However, the youth vote 18-30 (82.67%) is lower than 41-50 (86.30%) and 31-40 (86.76%). This could prove a useful tool when trying to address the youth voter turnout issue, trying to steer to alternative forms of voting like Early or Vote by Mail. In fact, with vote by mail the youth vote is the second highest rate of participation only reaching 71+.
Finally, I like to look at the hourly data on Election Day. There is no statistical value to this other than to manage expectations for future years. Regrettably, access to the 2019 data is unavailable because it was not archived. However, 2025 mimics other local years on record, 2021 & 2023. The day starts of low and builds till about 11 am. There is a slight lull between noon and 3pm. Then there is a dramatic upturn with 4-6pm being the busiest times of the day. We then see a dramatic decrease in the evening hours. This is the same in the one midterm election of 2022 we have data for. The two Presidential elections of 2024 and 2020 acted so dramatically differently we need more data to determine how Presidential and midterm electorates act.
That is, it for this week’s edition of the #WeeklyWonk. Next week I conclude my look back at the 2025 election to look at how Democrats did when it came to elective office. We will analyze districts that have undergone changes in seat allocation, those with consistent seat distribution, as well as regions where both parties contested only a limited number of offices. As always you can subscribe to dustinczarny.com for all content and election news updates. Enjoy.
I serve on the US Elections Assistance Commission Local Leadership council. I was included with some amazing election officials about the dedicated professionals running elections in America. Stay tuned till the end and I close this out, but tune in for the heroes around the nation who run elections
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In this week’s episode I talk about how we record write-ins at the Onondaga County Board of Elections. I talk about why some write ins are invalid and some of the limitations of NY Election Law. I recap a bit about my travel to the Cybersecurity summit as well as my last #weeklywonk and activity at the BOE. Enjoy.
I was a panelist at the Cyber Security Summit hosted by the Brennan Center and Common Cause NY and the Center for Long term Cybersecurity at the NYC Bar Association on December 11, 2025. My panel focused on specific ways County Board of Elections are looking to protect our elections as well as the challenges we face. Enjoy. See the whole summit here:
Welcome back to the #WeeklyWonk. This is my weekly look at election related stats and demographic information that is important to Syracuse, Onondaga County, and New York State. I took a brief hiatus from this blog in 2025 but now that 2025 election is officially certified, along with manual recounts and write-ins, we can now take an official look back at the stats that made up the 2025 election. As we close out December, I will do this in three parts: Election Turnout, Election Methods, & The New Blue Onondaga. This week we dive into part 1: 2025 General Election turnout.
For the 2025 General Election Onondaga County had 313,824 registered voters. Of them 93,421 (30%) turnouts while 220,403 (70%) stayed home. Of those that turned out 41,413 (44%) were Democrat, 27,359 (29%) were Republican, 1,655 (2%) were Conservative, 319 (1%) were working families. Another 22,675 (24%) were Unaffiliated. Meaning either non-enrolled or enrolled in an unrecognized party. Also, of those who turned out 70,601 (76%) voted on Election Day, 17,218 (18%) voted Early In-Person, 499 Voted by Mail, and 694 voted by Affidavit (either on Election Day or during Early Voting). We will go more into voting next week. The official voter turnout percentage was 29.77%. On its surface this was a typical local (odd) year turnout like 2023 (29.64%) and 2021 (31.08%).
To get a true sense of what happened in 2025, we must look at party turnout. There are always way more Democrats enrolled than republicans in Onondaga County, in fact the GOP are behind the Unaffiliated voters. However, every year the Democrats fail to turnout in as high a percentage of their enrollment as the GOP and thus undercut their strength in numbers. This year though, for the first time since 2009 (where I have data back to) the Democrats turned out in higher number and Higher percentage. Democrats turned out 35.59% of their electorate (41,413/116,353). Republicans turned out at 32.587% (27,359/83.970). The Unaffiliated turnout percentage is always much lower than the two major parties despite their numbers with just 21.25% turnout (22,675/106.687).
New year I wanted to look at voting age groups. To do so I broke Onondaga County into six distinct age ranges. As we can see this year, as every year, the age of the electorate is distinctively older. The older an age group, the higher in both raw numbers as well as the percentage of their registered numbers. 18-30 had 5,644 voters (11.0%), 31-40 9146 voters (17.8%), 41-50 11,742 (25.4%), 51-60 14,147 (31.6%), 61-70 23,272 (43.6%), 71+ 29,470 (48.7%). This means that 52,742 voters or 56.46% of the electorate that showed up was age 61+.
The next demographic to look at is regional turnout. Traditionally Onondaga County turnout into two distinct regions, The City of Syracuse and the Suburbs. The City of Syracuse, like with most urban centers, is usually a drag on voter turnout. The only year since 2009 that City of Syracuse turned out at a higher rate than the suburbs was in 2017, the last open mayoral contest. That is true this year as well but bnot be ,uch. Suburban turnout did outpace overall turnout at 30.50%, however the City turnout of 27.38% was only 3.12% behind the suburbs. This is the best City performance since 2017 and is due to the mayoral election generating turnout.
Even though the City of Syracuse trailed the suburbs in percentage of turnout, by sheer numbers they dominate raw number turnout. The 20,193 voters in the City of Syracuse is twice more than the #2 (Clay 10,348) and #3 (Manlius 9,513). We can see that Onondaga County has two class of suburban towns after that. Suburban moderate sized towns like Camillus, Cucero, Dewitt, Geddes, Lysander, Onondaga, & Salina which span from 4557 – 6407 voters. After that we have the smaller agrarian towns Elbridge, Fabius, Lafayette, Marcellus, Otisco, Pompey, Skaneateles, Spafford, Tully, and Van Buren spanning from 403 – 2,596 voters.
Further looking into the regional differences there is a stark difference to last yea’s performance. The City of Syracuse was so far behind the suburbs last year that there was not a ward inside the City that eqaled or surpassed any of the towns, not so this year The City of Syracuse (27.38%) had better turnout than 6 of the 17 towns such as Clay (24.16%), Cicero (26.32%), Lafayette (26.58%), Lysander (26.50%), Otisco (26.37%), & Van Buren (24.23%). In fact the 17th Ward of Syracuse (38.21%) was better than all but two towns. Other standouts beside are Strathmore (11 31.71%), and Eastwood (5 34.59%) areas. The king of this year’s turnout was the Town of Skaneateles (43.02%) followed closely by Spafford (41.15%).
Finally, to get a true sense of these numbers we want to look at performance when compared to registration. Here we look at the percentage of turnout in the 2025 General Election when compared to a demographic registration in the overall electorate. This chart gives us a great final look at why this election turned out the way it did. We see that Democrats overperformed their registration by 7.25% which is part of why we saw the results we did last month. Unaffiliated voters severely underperformed their registration by 9.73%. Older voters 61-70 (+7.55%) and 71+ (+11.88%) truly outpaced younger voters 31-40 (-6.91%) and 18-30 (-1064%). The City of Syracuse because of its larger population overcame its turnout deficit and made up a slightly higher proportion of the electorate when compared to its registration. It is important to show these figures when politicians are making tough choices, they will remember who shows up more often than who does not. I hope switching to elections aligned with even years will help balance these numbers.
That is, it for this week’s edition of the Weekly Wonk. Next week I will look at part 2 of my series examining the 2025 General Election. We will look at the methods that voters in Onondaga County choose to vote for this year. As always follow along at dustinczarny.com to get all content and election news information as we get ready for the big midterm 2026 elections.
In this week’s episode I detail what goes into a manual recount, the results of this week’s close contests, and why I think this law is a good thing, but how we can improve it. As always I detail about what is going on at the Onondaga County Board of elections as well.
In this week’s Commissioner in a Car I talk about what method Onondaga County voters chose to cast their vote this last November. I also detail what the Onondaga County Board of Elections did last week to certify the election. i also talk about how we have to break certification for the hand counts and to finish write ins this next week. Enjoy.
