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. We continue our look at Onondaga County with a focus on the suburbs. We look at the seventeen towns that surround the City of Syracuse.

We have 234,608 active registered voters in the suburbs of Onondaga County as of the close of July 2024. Democrats make up 76,474 (33%), Republicans 73,034 (31%) non-enrolled 69,192 (29%), Conservatives 4,407 (2%) Working Families 830 (<1%) and 10,671 are in various other not recognized parties (5%). The City of Syracuse only makes up 23% (71,098 voters) of the active voters of Onondaga County. The rest belongs to the suburbs. The suburbs can essentially be broken into two distinct types of towns. We have large suburban towns and small agrarian towns. The large suburban towns make up 64% (194,273 voters) of Onondaga County. The small agrarian towns make up just 13% (40,335 voters despite being roughly equal in acreage.

When we look at the partisan trends in Onondaga county, we see now familiar term trends since 1996 and also short-term trends since the last presidential election. Since 1996 Democrats in the suburbs have added 11,499 voters, & the non-enrolled have added 16,120 voters. The GOP though has lost 4,775 voters. However, since the 2020 election we are seeing a new trend. Democrats have lost 543 voters, and the GOP have lost 2,330 voters. However, the non-enrolled has exploded, adding 5,282 voters. It will be interesting to see whether this trend changes at all as registrations come in for the fall Presidential election.

Taking a look at the partisan makeup of the suburban regions of Onondaga County we can see why a pretty strong polarization. The City of Syracuse is the most Democratic with Democrats having a +41.92% enrollment advantage. The large suburban towns end up having a borderline Democratic advantage of 3.81%. The rural towns have a moderate GOP lean of 9.80%. The heavy Democratic lean of Syracuse and small lean of the large suburban towns  is what is driving the partisan lean of Onondaga County as the shear numbers overwhelm the small agrarian towns to give Onondaga County its slight blue lean.  In fact, the sheer numbers of the suburban towns alone allot the Democrats to have a small advantage even outside of the City of Syracuse.

We will take a look at most of these towns individually throughout the rest of the year, especially if they are having competitive races. However, this graph shows how towns have changed since 2009. Almost every town has gotten more Democratic over time. Since 2009 2 towns were slightly Democratic (Dewitt and Salina) and expanded their Democratic advantage. % towns (Camillus, Clay, Geddes, Manlius, & Onondaga) flipped from Republican advantage to Democrat, with Manlius being the biggest swing. We have had eight towns (Lafayette, Lysander, Marcellus, Pompey, Skaneateles, Spafford, Tully, & Van Buren) reduce their GOP advantage though remain Republican. Finally, four towns (Cicero, Elbridge, Fabius, & Otisco) have increased the GOP advantage over the last 15 years.

With that we check in on the heat map for Onondaga County. This has essentially remained unchanged since 2020. You have your bright blue dominant City of Syracuse in the middle of the county. You then see the easter direct suburbs with the dark solid democratic lean of Dewitt, followed by the slight leans of Manlius & Salina. The borderline Democratic towns of Clay sit to the north, and Camillus, Geddes, and Onondaga County to the direct west of Syracuse. Borderline GOP towns of Van Buen sit in the northwest and Cicero in the northeast. Slight GOP towns in Lysander, Marcellus, Skaneateles, Pompey, and Tully are scattered as we get farther out from Syracuse. Moderate GOP towns like Elbridge and Lafayette make up the next group. Spafford is in the next group with a strong GOP lean. Finally, you have the dominant GOP towns of Otisco and Fabius in the dark red.

An analysis of the suburbs cannot be complete without a look at how third parties affect the towns. While Conservatives are small county wide, they are mostly existing outside the City of Syracuse. With the Working Families having such a small number, this means every town shifts a bit to the right. This represents about a 2-3% shift per town. This is most evidently in play in the borderline towns from the heat map. Cicero and Van Buren become slight right ward leaning instead of borderline. Camillus flips from a borderline Democratic town to a borderline right lean. Onondaga Geddes, and Clay get remarkably close to evenly registered towns when you take the conservative effect on their enrollment.

Finally, we look at the comparative races and how they perform in the suburbs vs. the county overall. In general, the suburbs react about 4-5% more republican than the county as a whole. In 2022 Governor Kathy Hochul lost the suburbs and was only able to get 4.974% of the suburban vote which is 4.04% less than her win in Onondaga County. In the 2021 Supreme Court race Anthony Brindisi only got 46.84% of the suburban vote, 5.66% less than his Onondaga County total. President Biden’s 2024 race was the only comparative race that won the suburbs with 54.30% of the vote but that still trailed his county wide total by 4.58%. Finally last year Emily Essi was one of the closest races in Onondaga County but bucked the trend in the suburbs somewhat. Though she lost the suburbs with just 47.48% but that was only 2.66% lower than her Onondaga County total.

That is, it for this edition of the #weeklywonk. Nest week we will continue to look at the political subdivisions in our county holding elections. We will investigate the city of Syracuse which not only has two City Court races this year, but it will also play a vital part in the Congressional and Family Court races this fall. As always you can subscribe to dustinczarny.com to get all my content and election news updates.

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 start my 2-week investigation into the recent 2024 June Federal and local primary.  This week I investigate the voter behavior around the methods of alternative voting:  Early Voting, Vote BY Mail, and Affidavit balloting.

Ever since Early Voting was initiated in 2019 it has been seen through a partisan lens.  Democrats have focused campaigns and outreach around this new tool while the GOP sought to minimize its use and question its legitimacy.  This resulted in usage rates for Democrats outperforming their enrollment and the GOP lagging.  The 2024 June Primary was no different.  There were 3873 voters who Early voted and 94% of them were Democrats (3,626) while the GOP had just 6% (251).  There was only 1 singular conservative voter. Because of the lower population eligible to vote (Approximately 141k voters) we only opened 6 Early Voting spots, however that was still more than the minimum of 4 required by election law (1 for every full allotment of 30k eligible voters).  First was the Dewitt Town Hall with 1247 voters (32%), followed by Clay Town Hall (4841 21%), Camillus Fire Department (815 21%), Armond Magnarelli (405 10%), Beauchamp Library (330 9%), and last is Lafayette Fire Station (241 8%).

Early Voting in primaries, like turnout in general is very low usage. However, the 2024 June primary was busy relatively speaking.  The 3828 voters were the second highest raw voter volume, just behind the 4154 in the August 2022 primary.  The August 2022 congressional primary was the closest primary in terms of activity to compare the June 2024 primary too, but not an exact match.  There were more eligible voters in the August 2022 as the GOP and Democrats had choices countywide as opposed to just Democrats having countywide and GOP having only 40% of their voters eligible.  Thus 17.33% of the votes that were cast in the 2024 June primary were cast as Early Voters.  This is the highest percentage of any primary held since Early Voting was instituted in 2019 and an indication that Early Voting continues tog row with time as an option.

Unfortunately, the partisan trends are not as promising.  The reason the 2024 June primary election was so successful is the overwhelming usage and adoption by Democrats.  Some of this disparity was because Democrats had a county wide congressional primary with over 115k eligible voters, and the GOP had only a primary in SD 48 with just 35k eligible voters. Thus, looking at the percentages is helpful.18.78% of the Democrats who cast a vote and 3.13% of the voting eligible population chose to Early Vote.  The GOP however only had 8.22% of those who chose to vote and just 0.71% of the voting eligible population cast Early Votes.  In this primary it was Democrats driving the growth in Early Voting.

When diving into the polling location performance over the years during primaries we see a pattern emerging over the 9 different locations used.  Different sites are open during different primaries, so it is hard to get a real sense of performance.  However, the busiest site is always Dewitt Town Hall.  This is followed by Clay Town Hall and Camillus Fire station.  Armond Magnarelli leads the third tier of sites along with OCC and Lysander when used.  Lafayette Fire station and Beauchamp Library usually fall into the last tier along with SW Community center when used.  The North Syracuse Community Center has never been used in a primary election due to programming at their facility.

Vote by Mail voting includes three different types of ballots, Absentee, Early Vote by Mail, and inspector Ballots.  We issued a total of 4864 Vote by Mail Ballots for the June 2024 primary.  2300 ballots (47%) were successfully cast.  2369 ballots (49%) were not returned to the Board of Elections by the voters. 139 Ballots (3%) were returned to the Board of Elections undeliverable.  56 ballots were returned but ruled invalid (1%). Much like Early Voting Democrats dominated the returned ballots with 1965 ballots to the GOP 320 ballots.  Of the 56 ballots ruled invalid, 27 ballots (48%) were not postmarked timely, 20 ballots (36%) had technical difficulties and did not return their cure, 4 ballots (7%) were returned, and the voter passed away before counting it, 2 had non curable technical issues, 2 Ballots returned unvoted, and 1 ballot was returned and a voter requested it not be cast.

As stated, before primaries are low turnout affairs and that is reflected in the ballots returned as well.  A large amount of the Vote by Mail population are permanent absentees that get ballots mailed to them every election. Despite postage paid returns if there is not an interest in voting in the election the ballots will not be returned.  We can see that specially so in primaries. Mail balloting has seen a decrease in usage rates since the pandemic.  It is hoped that the new Early Vote by Mail option will improve that.  The 10.28% usage rate is slightly higher than other primaries which have been coming in at about 9% since the unofficial end of the pandemic in 2022.  The exception of course was the ultra-low turnout Presidential primary earlier this year that had 21.69% vote cast by mail.

The last alternative method of voting is Affidavit balloting.  These are ballots that are cast by voters in person that cannot be counted immediately. There were 130 affidavits turned in during the 2024 June primary.  102 were filled out by Democrats, 10 by the GOP, 1 by Conservatives, and 17 by other parties.  101 (78%) were ruled valid and 29 (22%) were ruled invalid. Of the invalid affidavit 19 (66%) were voters enrolled in the wrong party as New York is a closed primary state.    6 Affidavits (21%) voted by mail before turning in affidavits, 3 voters (1%) were not registered.  1 voter (3%) had technical reasons for not being ruled valid.

That is, it for this edition of the #weeklyWonk. Next week I will conclude my investigation of the June 2024 primary by looking into Election Day voting and Overall turnout.  After next week the focus of this column will be on the political subdivisions holding competitive elections for the fall general election. Subscribe to dustinczarny.com for all content and election news updates.