Long Island voters reject Republican and Democrat labels in record-high numbers, data shows

Long Island voters are increasingly rejecting Democratic and Republican parties, and any political party, as the share of unaffiliated voters this year hit a level not seen in at least 20 years, equaling or outpacing GOP enrollment, Newsday found.

Heading into this year's election, Nassau voters not registered to any party outnumbered Republicans for the first time since at least 2006. The number of so-called "blanks" also made similar gains in Suffolk County, according to numbers released Monday. As the unaffiliated voting bloc grows, Democratic and Republican enrollment is falling or staying flat across the Island.

"The increasing number of blanks is a repudiation of both major parties," said Lawrence Levy, executive dean at Hofstra University’s National Center for Suburban Studies, who has been covering and studying Long Island politics for nearly 50 years.

Jeff Wice, a New York Law School professor and former counsel to the State Legislature, said, "Hard-to-call elections may end up being decided by independent voters."

Levy agreed, saying, “[Blanks] have the power to move the dial from a safe race to a competitive one. ... They can really make a difference in ways that we’re only seeing now for the first time." 

In an analysis of voter registration data going back over 20 years, Newsday found  Nassau’s unaffiliated voter base has grown steadily from 21% in 2006 to 31% today. Blanks now outnumber Republicans, who constitute 30% of Nassau’s electorate. Democrats, meanwhile, make up 37% of active voters.

Over the last two decades, Nassau has seen a 0% or 1% increase in blanks each year. But this year, the base jumped from 28% in February to 31% in November.

Nassau's blanks are outpacing the trend statewide, where unaffiliated voters make up about 26% of the electorate, up from 20% in 2006.

In Suffolk, unaffiliated voters have also grown from 25% in 2006 to 31% this year, bringing them exactly on par with Republicans. Democrats make up 33% of active voters in the county.

"Figuring out who they are beyond the fact that they're not registered with a party is becoming harder and harder," Levy said. "Political parties have to figure out, who among them are natural supporters? Who among them are persuadable? What messages resonate?" 

‘Common sense party’

Jay Jacobs, chairman of both Nassau and New York State’s Democratic parties agreed, the trend in Nassau is a reaction to what’s happening in both parties.

"The Republican Party suffers from extremism on the right, and on our left you’ve got groups like the Democratic Socialists of America. ... That is not going to be attractive to everyone," said Jacobs, who did not endorse New York City's democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Nassau’s GOP chair Joe Cairo said the future may lie in a singular, moderate party. Several minutes before polls closed on Tuesday, he told reporters, "People don’t vote along party lines anymore ... I told Jay Jacobs, my Democratic counterpart, that in 20 years, his kids and my grandkids are going to belong to the same party. It’s going to be the ‘common sense party’ and the socialists way to the left."

Longtime political fixtures in Nassau like Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-Glen Cove) have held onto power in large part thanks to their centrist posture. Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Suozzi, who co-chairs the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, said he plans to work with the more liberal wing of his party and Republicans to "figure out how we find common ground."

Levy, however, believes it’s a mistake to see blank voters as a moderate monolith.

"There are conservative blanks, there are moderate blanks and there are liberal or progressive blanks," he said.

In New York, blanks are shut out from primary elections, which require voters to be registered with a party to nominate that party's candidate. Some states have so-called "open primaries," where anyone can vote.

The increase statewide in unaffiliated voters hasn't translated to the ballot: No leading unaffiliated candidate has yet to run without caucusing with a major party.

The historic rejection of major parties is a sign of historically low trust in the nation's political institutions, research shows. Just 17% of Americans say they trust the government to do what is right most of the time or "just about always" — the lowest it's been in nearly 70 years, according to Pew Research. 

‘Lesser of two evils’

For Michael Ashner, of Cove Neck, 2016 was the year he ditched the Republican Party label and became a blank voter.

"I didn’t want people to think I was an adamant Republican or an adamant Democrat," Ashner, 74, told Newsday.

Through the years, he’s voted for both Democrats and Republicans, splitting his ballot as recently as Tuesday when he voted for Republican Bruce Blakeman for governor and Democrat Tom DiNapoli for comptroller.

But Ashner’s vote for Blakeman wasn’t an outpouring of support for the twice-elected Nassau County executive. It was a vote against a "surge of the progressive left" and incumbent Gov. Kathy Hochul, who Ashner said he supported in 2022 but who has disappointed him since. Hochul’s ties with Mamdani, the state’s growing affordability issues and regulatory burdens for new businesses, he said, pushed him to vote for Blakeman.

"For the last 20 years, maybe more, I’ve been voting against a candidate as much as voting for a candidate," Ashner chuckled. "This one was more of a vote against the direction the state is taking under Hochul. It wasn't an embrace of Blakeman."

The last time Ashner remembers feeling passionately in support of a candidate was when the late Arizona Sen. John McCain ran for president in 2008.

"I didn’t always agree with him, but I liked him," he said, adding, "I wish I’d been an independent from the beginning, frankly."

Michael Campbell, 23, said while voting in Massapequa on Election Day that he, too, was open to splitting his ballot. His was a vote against Republican candidates, rather than a sparkling endorsement for Democrats. 

"Democrats are the lesser of two evils," he said.

‘Totally independent’

Keith Davies, a spokesman for Suffolk’s Democratic Party, said the only way to understand the growing base of blank votes is to talk to them.

"We knocked on tens of thousands of doors. Blanks were a big target this year," he said. "You have these text message surveys, who’s really answering those? You have to knock on doors and make phone calls and actually talk to these people." 

Many voters act like blanks, though they are registered with a political party. Just because someone is a registered Republican, for example, does not mean they cast their ballot that way.

At the Nassau GOP's election night party on Tuesday, Tush Nikollaj, of Mayfield, a small, heavily Republican hamlet northwest of Albany, said he was a registered Republican simply because of where he lived.

"I'm a registered Republican because I'm in Mayfield," Nikollaj laughed. "But I’m a total independent."

That phenomenon is nothing new, according to Levy. New York City Democrats who move out to Long Island found the people setting their taxes are Republicans, and think, " 'I better register as a Republican,' " he said.

For Nikollaj, "It all depends on where the pendulum is," he said.

He said he voted for President Donald Trump, but admits right now he's not happy with him.

Newsday's Deborah Morris contributed to this story.