Could Suffolk early birds send Zeldin soaring?
Edwin Mui, of Dix Hills, waits on line to vote early at the Dix Hills Fire Department on Saturday. Credit: Debbie Egan-Chin
Daily Point
Strong Island
Early voting numbers through the end of Wednesday suggest a surge of voting in Suffolk County and a bump in Nassau, regions crucial to a victory for Lee Zeldin or Kathy Hochul in the race for governor.
Suffolk, with its strong Trump base, is the home county for Zeldin. More than 40,000 people from Suffolk have voted early through the first five days that option was available. In Nassau, there were over 60,000 votes, compared with just over 210,000 in much more populous and more Democratic New York City.
This is the cumulative early vote for the first five days of early voting, with four days remaining.
Credit: New York State Board of Elections
To get a sense of the meaning of that turnout, The Point compared each figure with the jurisdiction’s early votes from the same point in the cycle in 2020, a presidential election when turnout tends to be high.
NYC’s early voting turnout so far is only 36% of what it was after Day 5 in 2020. Nassau is at 52%, and Suffolk is at 64%.
Statewide, the early vote count is around 44% of what it was at this point in 2020, showing just how relatively strong the Long Island turnout has been.
There are two hot congressional battles in Nassau — CD3 and CD4 — initially rated as “leaning Democratic” in national analyses of control of the House of Representatives, but both were shifted this week to “toss up” by the Cook Political Report.
In another hot region of the state, Democratic Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney is facing a competitive challenge from GOP Assemb. Michael Lawler in CD17, which draws mostly from Westchester, Putnam, and Rockland counties. In all of Democratic-leaning Westchester, the five-day early vote total is 42% of 2020. In purple or right-leaning Putnam and Rockland, it is 76% and 61%, respectively.
City Democrats seem to be belatedly revving up their engines to get out their five-borough base, so the regional numbers could stabilize by the end. And we don’t know exactly whom the people turning out are actually supporting. The state numbers from which this analysis is drawn don’t include party identification, but county-level figures do, which can at least provide an estimate. The latest figures from Suffolk’s election board log 18,141 early votes from Democrats and 15,287 from Republicans.
Nassau’s five-day early voting figures broken down by party were similarly close: 26,627 for Democrats and 24,667 for Republicans.
Talking Point
And the winner is …
The wait continues.
Great Neck residents won’t know the results of their local library election even by the time they go to the polls to elect candidates for federal and state elected offices next week.
Sources told The Point that with 51 votes left to count, more than half of which have been challenged, Great Neck library officials have postponed further counting until next Wednesday.
The vote tally as of Nov. 2 was tight, making those 51 votes decisive in all three races. And the results showed a potential split between the slates that had formed primarily over the culture war issues pervading the library district.
Incumbent Liman Mimi Hu, Rory Lancman and Kim Schader had run as a team, focused on diversity, equity and inclusion and other related issues, against Jessica Hughes, Christina Rusu and Sara Rivka-Khodadadian, who had formed their campaign around parental rights and “community values.”
As of now, this is the tally, including one additional candidate who was not part of either slate:
- Hughes: 1,745; Hu: 1,717
- Lancman: 1,643; Rusu: 1,621; Karen Hirsch-Romero: 152
- Rivka-Khodadadian: 1,664; Schader: 1,646
The library emerged Thursday with a statement that said the results were “not yet available.”
“We continue to work with all candidates as we canvass ballots in order to certify final results,” the library’s statement said.
“At this point, we may know who won the race for governor more quickly than we’ll know who was elected library trustee and nominating committee member,” Lancman told The Point.
Not so fast. If the library process is any indication, it’s likely voters in the general election will also have to wait beyond Tuesday evening for results in New York and around the nation.
Pencil Point
The finish line
Credit: Columbia Missourian/John Darkow
For more cartoons, visit www.newsday.com/nationalcartoons
Reference Point
Election selections
The Newsday editorial from Nov. 3, 1941.
Elections have been an essential part of Newsday’s coverage and mission since its inception, both in the news section and on the opinion pages, which operate independently of the news operation. For the editorial board, that has meant evaluating and providing guidance on specific candidates for particular offices, as well as making general entreaties to readers to exercise their franchise and vote.
The board made such a plea on Nov. 3, 1941, barely a year after the paper’s founding and one day before voters were to go to the polls.
“But don’t forget to vote,” the board implored. “Not only on state issues, but on those in the county as well, you should cast your ballot at the polls tomorrow.”
The lion’s share of the editorial, titled “Vote to Save Lives,” was an impassioned plea to reject a state proposal to divert $60 million from a fund to eliminate grade crossings and spend it instead on highways and parkways, an issue the Point examined two weeks ago. It was accompanied by a cartoon depicting the cloaked figure of Death called “The Toll Collector” writing on a list of the deceased while standing next to a grade crossing.
Alas, New York’s voters disagreed and approved the diversion, and Long Island is still plagued by grade crossings. It was the only one of Newsday’s recommendations on four state proposals with which voters disagreed.
In 1969, there were four more statewide proposals on the ballot — one of which the board described in a Nov. 3 editorial called “The Summing Up” as “a ‘Conservation Bill of Rights’ in the State Constitution” — and this time New York voters agreed with the board and approved all four propositions.
Also on the ballot that year was a Suffolk proposal to establish the Southwest Sewer District, which the board endorsed and voters barely approved, having overwhelmingly rejected a more ambitious plan two years earlier. Of course, on that Election Day, no one could foresee the scandals to come that short-circuited the further installation of sewers, leaving Suffolk in roughly the same place as it was 53 years ago — in desperate need of sewers.
Sometimes voters — and editorial boards — get it right, and sometimes not. But as the board pointed out back in 1941, the most important thing is to partake in the process.
“This is the occasion when you can put into concrete form your objection or approval of your present representatives; when you can decide whether you want a change or are content,” the board wrote. “It is an opportunity no registered voter should ignore.”
