Happy New Year and welcome back to the #weeklywonk. One of my 2026 New year’s resolutions is to get back to this, my weekly look at registration electoral data in Onondaga County and New York State. I took a brief hiatus from this column in 2025 with just sporadic columns, but now in 2026 I am back with renewed vigor. As we start the New Year I focus my efforts on Onondaga County overall. This will be four parts to look at our home, Onondaga county: Overall, Suburbs, the City of Syracuse, and the Onondaga County Legislature. This week is part 1, Onondaga County Overall. In 2026 Statewide offices such as governor, Comptroller and Attorney General, NY 22 Congressional race, Supreme Court, County Court, and Sheriff will run countywide.

We start with a historic look at voter registration totals in Onondaga County. For comparisons sake we look at the active voter registrations right before the November election of each year except for 2026 which is the registration data as of January 1, 2026. We start 2026 with 307,985 active registered voters. This is down from the 2024 record of 319,960 but still the fourth highest registered voter total on record. What we are seeing is a typical downward trend after a Presidential election. Normally registered voter totals crest in Presidential year and then fall. The major exception to this was 2016-2020 which saw increases in voter registration during the first Trump presidential years. We also made it easier to register between 2020-2024 and the pandemic years made the decreases less noticeable.

Of our 307,985 voters we see a large plurality of voters registered in the Democratic party. There are 113,800 Democrats (37%) compared to 83,008 Republicans (27%). The non-enrolled population is second most registration with 92,634 voters (30%). The Conservative party has 5,162 voters (2%) and the working families party has 1,562 voters (<1%). There are 11,818 (4%) voters enrolled in non-recognized parties. When it comes to the regions of Onondaga County, I break it up into five distinct regions. The plurality of voters lives in the Northern towns of Clay, Cicero, and Lysander with 83,622 voters (27%). Next is the City of Syracuse, which has 69,982 voters, representing 23%. The eastern towns of Dewitt, Manlius, and Salina have 65,782 voters (21%). The western towns of Camillus, Elbridge, Geddes, Onondaga, and Van Buren have 56,601 (18%). The rest of the towns (Fabius, Lafayette, Marcellus, Pompey, Skaneateles, Spafford, Otisco, and Tully) make up the southern portion of Onondaga County, the largest land mass, but the least populated with just 31,994 (11%).

Here we have had partisan trends in Onondaga County since 1996. The long-term story of Onondaga County is how an upstate red dominated county has transformed over the last 30 years from a solidly red Republican County to a solidly blue Democratic County. Democrats first overtook republicans in the 2008 Obama Presidential election and have not looked back since. The Democrats most dominant stretch was their growth in the 2016-2020 cycle with large gains compared to stagnate GOP registration. Since the last 2024 Presidential election all three groups we are tracking, Democrats, Non-enrolled, and Republican voters, are trending down as the voter registration rolls have shrunk. A key point often missed is that an increasing number of people in Onondaga County are not enrolling in a party. In so many ways the 2016 election is a turning point both nationally and locally. Since 2016 the Democrats have had decent growth adding 8,291 voters. Meanwhile the GOP has stagnated, losing only 623 voters, which is a bit of improvement from steady decline since 2004-2015. However, the massive growth of the non-enrolled voter is the dominant story since. 2-16, adding 18,418 voters. This is a trend that will shape Onondaga County elections for years to come.

Onondaga County has four individually recognized parties, the Democrat, Republican, Conservative, and Working family’s party. Though they are four different parties, the Conservative and Republican party tends to align on the right while the Democrat and Working families party aligns with the left. Comparing the combined totals of Democratic–Working Families and Republican–Conservative parties show how the Democratic advantage in Onondaga County has grown. The left aligned parties of the Democrats and WFP currently have an 8.83% advantage over the right aligned GOP and Conservative parties. This is down the high of 2021 with 9.9% but still higher than every year before 2019. One reason for this trend is the rise in non-enrolled voters, which has lessened the influence of all four parties. Additionally, after the 2024 election, voters—particularly in Syracuse and around Syracuse University—removed from the rolls due to issues with mail verification and undelivered mail. When 2028 comes about it will be helpful to look at this data set from presidential to presidential and see if this trend continues to grow as it has since 1996.

Looking at the five regions of Onondaga County, we find a truly diverse partisan story. The City of Syracuse is the third largest region but the highest number of Democrats and the highest partisan advantage with Democrats having a 40.51% advantage. The Northern region is the most populace but also even partisan wise. The second the greatest number of Democrats live here and the greatest number of Republicans. The GOP has a slight +1.02% advantage. The Eastern towns have gro2wn into a solid Democratic bastion with the third the greatest number of Democrats and a solid Democratic partisan advantage +10.20%. The western towns are the most evenly split region. It has the second the greatest number of GOP and fourth greatest number of Democrats, but the GOP only has a minuscule +.30% partisan advantage. The most solid GOP regions are the least populace region, the south. The GOP hold a +10.13%, Of note is where the non-enrolled outnumber a major party also seems to correspond to high partisanship in the region. Syracuse, the East, and the south all experience this pattern.

This year I want to introduce a new statistical category to analyze age. The average age of an Onondaga County active registered voter is 50.87 years old. In discussing age, I will break Onondaga County into 6 distinct age categories 18-30 54,459 voters (18%), 31-40 51,933 voters (17%), 41-50 45,265 voters (15%), 51-60 46,052 voters (15%), 61-70 53,000 voters (17%), and 71+ 55,276 voters (18%). When looking at the partisan trends of these age groups, Democrats have the advantage in all of them but to a varying degree. Democrats have a +19.22% advantage in the 31-40 group, +16.02% in the 18-30 group, +14.42% in the 41-50 group. In each of those groups the non-enrolled dwarf the GOP. However, in the upper range the Democratic candidates dropped to just +4.30% in the 71+, +3.22% in the 61-70, and +2.52% in the 51-60. These groups tend to be more partisan driven with less non-enrolled voters. Comparing these figures with voter turnout helps explain why elections in Onondaga County are highly competitive: older voters participate at higher rates than younger ones, and Democrats typically turn out less often than Republicans.

Finally, we look at the comparison races in Onondaga County. 2025 was an unusual year as we did not have a one-to-one race that covered all of Onondaga County to draw a comparison for how Onondaga County performed. So, I am drawing two races from 2024 to compare and two from 2022. Our two odd year comparisons, 2021 Supreme Court with Anthony Brindisis (+5.04%) and. 3 County Clerk with Emily Bersani (.33%) show what typical odd year elections mean for Onondaga County with tight races (Brindisis lost the Supreme Court race by about 9% by losing in the other 5 counties).  In 2022, the last Gubernatorial year, Kathy Hochul won Onondaga County by 7.75% which was near how she won state-wide. For congress in 2022 the Democratic nominee Fran Conole won Onondaga County by 12.00% but lost the race by about 1%. J.  Mannion in 2024 won the Congressional race in Onondaga County by 18.78% won overall by about 9%. Mannion did better than Presidential Candidate Kamala Harris who only won about 17.18% (down from 20% Biden won in 2020) which shows why Harris underperformed in less Democratic states in the country and lost the presidency to Trump.

That is it for this week’s edition of the #weeklywonk. Next week I will look at part 3 of my focus on Onondaga County as I will focus on the suburbs of Onondaga County. I will then the next week look at the City of Syracuse followed by the Onondaga County Legislature to close out our top-level look at our home Onondaga County going into 2026. As always you can follow along by subscribing to dustinczarny.com to get an email notification for all media and content updates.

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 5^th 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.