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Rout? Mandate? Landslide? Try 15 Percent Of Eligible Voters
November 9th, 2005

1. About 220,000 fewer New Yorkers voted in this general election than four years ago — 1.2 million instead of 1.4 million. (There are about 4.7 million New Yorkers who are eligible to vote — citizens of voting age.)

2. Bloomberg won with just 15 percent of eligible voters. (In 2001, it was 15.3 percent; this year, it’s gone up to…15.4 percent)

3. The largest bloc of New Yorkers by far, demographically, is not Democrats or Republicans or even Latinos or Jews. It’s non-voters. See New York Is A Non-Voting Town, written by Professor Andrew Beveridge in August, 2004, but nothing’s changed.

By Jonathan Mandell on November 9, 2005, 11:16 am
In category: Electoral Politics, Voting
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One Response to “Rout? Mandate? Landslide? Try 15 Percent Of Eligible Voters”

  1. Bob Fois Says:
    November 9th, 2005 at 3:42 pm

    Both Republicans and Democrats involved in the party structures have the same frustrations as the voters.

    It’s an autocratic system in Albany, one that used to be competitively countered by political machines on both sides of the aisle. Post-Watergate America neutered those machines but they didn’t emasculate the bosses.

    Pardon my gender references, though the ironic result has been a political establishment apparently run better by a non-partisan lobby.

    If we get rid of the autocratic rules in legislative operations, as the Brennan Center suggested last year, we might bring back consensus-built political involvement.

    Until powers like “initiative and referenda” is passed by our State Legislature, New Yorkers will continue to stay home on Election Day.

    They don’t believe their vote means anything anymore.

    Frankly, I know a lot of elected officials who wonder if THEIR vote in session means anything.

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