Last Thursday, the State Board of Elections official certified this year’s General Election Results and both they and the City BOE have made detailed results available. I’ve reviewed the results to see what was interesting and/or surprising and have found not much – at least among the major Parties.
No parsing of the numbers makes a Democratic landslide look like anything else. Among the statewide candidates, the four Democrats each carried every Assembly District except one. The 62nd AD, on Staten Island was won by Jeanine Pirro (57%), John Spencer (51%) and Christopher Callaghan (50%).
But among the results I did find a few things that I thought were somewhat interesting.
WORKING FAMILIES CAMPAIGN PITCH TO LIBERALS WORKED
The Working Families Party made a big effort to try to pass either the Conservative or Independence Party to move up to Row 3 or 4 on the ballot. They fell short as the IP received 190,661 for Eliot Spitzer on their line, the Conservatives 168,654 for John Faso and the WFP 155,184 for Spitzer.
One of the ways the WFP campaigned was by contacting liberal Democrats with the request that they send a message by voting for Spitzer on the WFP rather than the Democratic line. I, myself, received a large number of e-mail messages with this pitch and I assume others did too. While the overall campaign did not succeed, it clearly had an effect.
While none of the other minor Parties broke 5% of the vote for Governor in any of New York City’s Assembly Districts, the WFP did so in 18 Districts. The WFP clobbered the other minor parties in the City, where they received 74,221 votes to the IP’s 36,882 and the Conservative’s 20,897.
I was shocked to see the WFP receive 22% or more than 7,575 votes in the 52nd AD (Brooklyn Heights-Cobble Hill). The 52nd is one of the most liberal, highly educated districts in the City. The other top WFP districts (where they received 10% or more) are similar to the 52nd:
AD (Park Slope-Flatbush) 16%
57th AD (Ft. Greene-Clinton Hill) 14%
69th AD (Morningside Heights) 13%
66th AD (Greenwich Village-Soho) 13%
74th AD (East Village-Gramercy) 12%
50th AD (Williamburgh-Greenpoint) 10%
I await comments from Gatemouth and others about the fact that the top three Districts are where Bruce Ratner’s proposed development will take place. By the way, the WFP’s worst AD in the City with just 2.2% of the vote was, perhaps not surprisingly, the 73rd on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
BOYCOTTING HEVESI
It’s clear that many voters refused to choose between Alan Hevesi and Christopher Callaghan.
Statewide, while 4,701,065 voters voted this year, 566,092 did not vote for any Comptroller candidate. This compares to 213,777 who skipped the US Senate race and is also more than the 263,845 who didn’t vote for Governor and the 397,715 who didn’t vote for Attorney General. S
Similarly, many more votes were cast for the alternative candidates to Hevesi & Callaghan than were cast for the alternatives to major candidates for other statewide office. Green, Libertarian, Socialist Workers & write-in candidates for Comptroller totaled 173,125 compared to 76,176 for the similar choices for Governor, 89,436 for Senator and 101,459 for Attorney General.
If the State used the vote for Comptroller not Governor to determine if a Party received ballot status, the Greens would be back on the ballot as their candidate for Comptroller got 117,908 compared to only 42,166 for Governor. Even the Libertarians came close as their Comptroller candidate received 40,472 votes compared to just 14,736 for Governor.
WHOSE RENT IS TOO DAMN HIGH?
Perhaps an answer to that question was provided on Election Day. The best districts for Jimmy McMillan, the candidate of the Rent is Too Damn High Party were the 79th AD (Morrisania) and 56th AD (Brownsville). On the other hand, more voters (8,103) cast votes for the Party outside the City than in NYC (5,252). Maybe the real estate boom is really ending!