Every Presidential Election brings new voters to the polls – voters who have never voted before.
Because of the historic nature of the 2008 election, I thought it would be interesting to look at these voters and see how they compare to all New York City voters.
Using the Prime New York voter file, I identified 679,984 voters who voted in the 2008 General election who never voted in a previous General election in New York City. That’s 16% of New York’s registered voters and 32% of the those who voted in 2008.
As you might expect, these new voters are considerably younger than all voters –
25% are younger than 25 while less than 10% of all voters are that young.
Only 5% are over 65 as compared to 20% of all voters.
On the other hand, 57% of these new voters are women, which is roughly the same as it among all voters.
The Party registration of the new voters is Democrats 68%, which is the same as among all voters, while only 8% are Republicans, a drop from their 11% of all voters.
Geographically 15% of the new voters are in the Bronx, 30% in Brooklyn, 26% in Manhattan, 24% in Queens and 5% in Staten Island, which is not very different than the whole electorate (Manhattan & Queens are reversed among all voters).
Finally my estimate of the racial breakdown of the new voters break down is as follows –
Blacks 30%
Hispanics 20%
Asian 5%