What Do We Know About Who Voted Early In The New York City Primary?

Voters in Downtown Brooklyn, Manhattan’s Upper West Side, and southeast Queens cast ballots early at higher numbers than the rest of the city’s eligible electorate, according to data on early-voter turnout released from the New York City Board of Elections on Monday, one day after Gothamist reported on the agency’s previously inconsistent responses to public information data requests.

In many ways this will be an election of firsts. It’s the first time a wide-open municipal primary election has been held in June, with nine days of early voting and the new system of ranked-choice voting. All these factors make it hard to compare to previous elections, but campaigns remained out in force across the city hoping to drum up last minute get-out-the vote energy, seeking to drive their base to the polls and build on the support among the newest voters.

Altogether, 191,197 people turned out for early voting, about 5% of the eligible electorate, which includes 3.3 million active Democrats, just under 500,000 active Republicans. There’s also a small sliver of Conservative Party voters in the 19th City Council district. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of those who have voted early are Democrats; just over 8,600 Republicans and 12 (twelve) Conservative voters cast ballots, according to an analysis from the New York City Campaign Finance Board.

In the Democratic primary, women turned out for early voting at a higher rate, making up 58% of the total (106,150) compared to 42% for men (75,692).

Early voting, which ran from June 12th to June 20th, took some time to pick up steam. While city elections officials posted cumulative totals for each day, Gothamist / WNYC broke down the daily turnout and saw a steady increase starting on Wednesday, the fifth day and the midpoint of the early voting period. Not surprisingly, the highest turnout was on Sunday, the last day of early voting.

Based on the early votes cast, an analysis by the NYC Campaign Finance Board found that 38% came from voters who have not voted in any municipal primary election going back to 2013. But understanding who comprises that segment of the electorate is more complicated.

“There are many reasons that may explain this, beyond ‘newly activated’ voters,” said Allie Swatek, Director of Policy & Research at the CFB. “It could be newly registered voters, folks who’ve turned 18 since 2013, newly naturalized citizens, or folks who moved to the city,” she said. However, among these new municipal primary voters, they have been registered to vote, on average, for 13 years.

During the 2013 primary election, when there was no early voting, 23% of eligible active primary voters turned out. To match that overall turnout, more than 600,000 more voters would need to cast their ballot on Primary Day or return an absentee ballot by the deadline, postmarked June 22nd and delivered to a Board of Elections office by Tuesday, June 29th.

Turnout is expected to be down significantly from the 62% in last November’s general election, when more than 3 million people voted of the city’s 5 million registered voters,  including members of all parties and unaffiliated voters.

Additional mapping by Steve Romalewski at The Graduate Center CUNY Mapping Center