NY21 election statistics you didn’t know

If numbers aren’t your thing, scroll on by…

Edit note: because of a formatting problem I’m adding screenshots of the charts in the text. If it wasn’t easy to read before it might be worse now.

After every election Boards of Election release statistics on the numbers of votes and people tally the winning percentages of the total number of votes. Here are some numbers for my district, NY21 in northern NY.

Year Democrat Republican Other Total

2014 59,063 (33.8%) 96,226 (55.1%) 19,238 (11%) 174,668

2016 82,161 (30.2%) 177,886 (65.3%) 12,452 (4.6%) 272,499

2018 99,791 (42.4%) 131,981 (56.1%) 235,209

2020 131,992 (41.1%) 188,649 (58.8%) 320,779

2022* 116,421 (40.8%) 168,579 (59.1%) 285,095

*NY21 was redistricted after the 2020 election and has a larger population.

The obvious takeaways are that in presidential election years (2016, 2020) a lot more people vote. The winner in each of these elections, Republican Stefanik, has benefitted from an enormous increase in Republican vote stating in 2016 but Democrats have been increasing turnout substantially as well over several election cycles. What is up with that?

NY21 District totals (active voters) and registered voter turnout.

Year Active Voters Turnout

2014 394,007 44.34%

2016 406,198 67.09%

2018 405,521 58%

2020 432,954 74.1%

2022* 479,909 59.4%

2023 488,257

(Note that active voters are only a portion of the population which doesn’t include those under 18, or unregistered people. District populations are typically very roughly 770,000 and vary by district and by year)

There are roughly 94,000 more voters in the district today than in 2014, 85,000 more in 2022 than in 2014. I calculated some statistics on increase of voters and percentages.

Year Dem increase(decrease) from prv. Rep increase(decrease) from previous

2016 23,098 81,660

2018 17,630 (45,905)

2020 32,201 56,668

2022 (15,571) (20,070)

From 2014 to 2020 Democrats gained 72,929 votes while in that same period Republicans gained 92,423. But what are the numbers of voters? This chart shows registered voters and percent of total registration by party.

Year Dem / % Rep / % Blanks / %

2014 114,224 / 29% 167,411 / 42.5% 79,763 / 20.24%

2016 118,711 / 29.2% 168,133 / 41.4% 85,357 / 21%

2018 119,262 / 29.4% 166,290 / 41%. 85,689 / 21.1%

2020 126,323 / 29.2% 175,030 / 40.4% 95,858 / 22.1%

2022* 137,168 / 28.9% 184,953 / 38.5%. 116,433 / 24.3%

2023 135,801 / 27.8% 190,029 / 38.9%. 123,311 / 25.3%

What we see here is that Democrats have gained 21,577 voters since 2014 and Republicans gained 22,618. Pretty similar numbers. While Democrats have slightly lost percentage of registered voters Republicans have lost a bit more. But holy cow! Blanks (unaffiliated voters) have gained 43,548 voters, over 5% increase, and more than twice as many as the main parties.

I think these numbers need a bit of explaining. remember that in 2022 NY21 was redistricted. At the time many considered the district to be more strongly Republican, but that doesn’t seem the case. Since 2014 Democratic and Republican parties have gained voters (D +21,577, R +22,618) but as a percentage of the vote Dems have stayed fairly consistent losing 1.2% while Republicans have lost 3.6% of a larger number. Yes, Blank (unaffiliated) voters, those not registered in any party, have increased significantly, but during that time several smaller parties have lost automatic ballot status and most of their voters have fallen into the Blank category.

Now let’s look at the actual vote as a percentage of total registrations.

Year Dem Rep Total registration Rep advantage

2014 15% 25% 394,007 10%

2016 20.2% 43.8% 406,198 23.6%

2018 24.6% 32.5% 405,521 7.9%

2020 30.5% 43.6% 432954 13.1%

2022 24.5% 35.1%. 479,909 10.6%

This seems to me to be a better measure of voter engagement and it paints a slightly different picture than the numbers people typically quote. It shows that there has been a much higher degree of engagement since Stefanik was first elected. I speculate that is largely due to the MAGA movement. It brought an 18.8% increase for Stefanik since her first election. Obviously there is a degree of advantage for her due to incumbency as well but her boost in the off year of 2018 was only 7.5% while engagement on the Dem side between 2014 and 2018 was 9.6% higher - some of that likely due to the disappearance of temporary Green Party strength and a reverting of many of those voters back to the Dem candidate.

Comparing presidential election years of 2016 to 2020 the Republican vote percentage is flat, actually a 0.2% loss, while the Democratic side gained 10.3%.

While the Dem candidate in 2022 was considered by many in the Dem party to be potentially a “better” candidate he actually lost very slightly (0.1%) of the total potential vote compared to the 2018 Dem candidate.

One more chart. The number of votes per candidate as a percent of the total party enrollment.

Year Dem Rep

2014 33.8% 57.48%

2016 69.2% 105.8%

2018 42.1% 79.4%

2020 104.5% 107.8%

2022 40.8% 91.2%

I suspect that Democrats will remain highly engaged in 2024 tho that engagement may not transfer to the congressional race, but that Republicans and those who vote with them will not carry their highest numbers. Not that Stefanik will lose, but it will show vulnerability. I suspect that the percentage of vote on the Dem line will be around 100% of total Dem registration, while Stefanik will remain below 100% of the same measure for Republicans.

Remember that these are numbers from the congressional race. The presidential race in this district has somewhat different results with the Republican candidate not being as strong as Stefanik.