Monday’s release by Marist College and the Dyson Foundation of a telephone survey of 4,300 Hudson Valley residents called “Many Voices, One Valley 2007” contained at least one startling nugget of political information. A similar survey in 2002 had found that 39 percent of the seven-county population identified themselves at the time as Republicans, 32 percent as Democrats, and 24 percent as not enrolled in any party. Now, only five years later, the three political groupings are practically in a dead heat, with 34 percent Democrats, 33 percent Republicans and 32 percent non-party-enrolled.
The Marist survey, a model of thorough research, is consistent with other data. When it comes to the map of New York State politics, Republican upstate is no more.
In the last generation, the bastion that could once be relied upon to cancel out even a huge New York City Democratic plurality has been completely eroded. Nor, barring serious political missteps by newly dominant upstate Democrats, is the trend likely to reverse. Most of upstate north and west of the Hudson Valley has lost population, economic activity and vitality, while downstate has been going in the opposite direction.
As of this year, more New York voters living outside New York City were enrolled as Democrats than as Republicans. In the 1970s, by contrast, the Republican plurality was taken for granted. Upstate Republican enrollees outnumbered upstate Democrats by about three to two.
State political expert Gerald Benjamin calls what’s happening in the Empire State “the Massachusettsization of New York.” Decades ago, the Bay State began its long-term evolution from a balance between urban Democrats and suburban and rural Republicans to statewide Democratic dominance.
The Mid-Hudson – and beyond
When the number of enrolled Democrats in Ulster County first exceeded the number of enrolled Republicans two years ago, it marked a local political watershed. In political terms, that seems (already!) a long time ago. Local figures including only active voters now show a 3,200-vote gap between the major parties in Ulster County. State enrollment figures, which include inactive voters as well as active voters, show 39,000 Democrats and only 34,000 Republicans in Ulster County.
In Dutchess County, the state’s election data now shows 53,000 enrolled Democrats versus 57,000 Republicans. The Republican plurality, 8,000 as recently as four years ago, has now shrunk to 4,000. If the present trends hold, the Democrats of Dutchess County figure to catch up with the GOP within five years.
The Republican cushion in Orange County is by comparison a little more comfortable for the GOP, with 76,000 enrolled Republicans and 67,000 Democrats. That gives the GOP about a dozen years to figure out how to stem the Democratic enrollment tide.
Many observers attribute the tilt in enrollment toward the Democrats in the Mid-Hudson region to the continuing inflow of downstate city people. Since there are now almost 2.8 million enrolled Democrats versus only half a million Republicans in New York City, that conclusion would seem obvious.
Everybody has always said the Democratic surge is due to “transplants from New York City,” observes Ulster County Democratic Party chairman John Parete. Former Democrats who changed registrations when they moved to heavily Republican upstate are no longer reluctant to return to the Democratic fold.
But that’s not the whole story. The trend toward the Democrats is observable to one degree or another throughout the northeastern part of the United States. In New York State, the same striking shift in political enrollments toward the Democrats can be seen in upstate regions that have very little contact with Gotham.
Here are a few numbers to reinforce that point:
In 1974 Republicans on Long Island and in the Hudson Valley outnumbered the Democrats by the same three-to-two margin they enjoyed upstate as a whole. And 33 years later the Democrats now outnumber the Republicans.
Looking further upstate at the four metropolitan areas with the lion’s share of the north-of-the-Hudson-Valley upstate voters (Albany, Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse), there has been in the same 33 years a change from a Republican edge of 210,000 voters (855,000 Republicans and 642,000 Democrats) to a Democratic edge of 130,000 (804,000 Republicans and 934,000 Democrats).
That leaves the Republicans with the allegiance of a relatively small flock of the remaining New York faithful: only the rural upstaters outside the larger metropolitan areas. It is a commentary on the magnitude of the party slide that even here the GOP edge is less than overwhelming: 476,000 to 424,000.
To some degree, the Democrats need a numerical edge in order to maintain parity with the Republicans. A higher proportion of enrolled Republicans actually show up to vote at the polling places than do Democrats. The Democrats are particularly vulnerable in college towns, where the Democratic vote in local elections is strikingly low considering the heavy Democratic enrollments.
Age demographics
All politics remains local. New Yorkers not enrolled in any political party remain more numerous in most jurisdictions than those who belong to either majority party. The minor parties — Independence, Conservative, Working Families, Green and the others — retain influence in close elections.
The fact remains that New York is now a solidly “blue” state, favoring the Democrats in national politics. As we have seen, only part of the “bluing” of New York can be attributed to the political spillover from New York City and other Democratic-leaning big cities into suburban, exurban and rural areas. What might account for the rest of it?
Northeastern voters under 30 years old are by and large more liberal than their fellow citizens 60 years or older. An analysis of political enrollees in Ulster and Dutchess counties confirms this. In New York, people provide the boards of elections with their birth date when they register. For purposes of this analysis, election officials in the two counties were kind enough to cross-tabulate their records last week for age, political jurisdiction and political affiliation.
Of the 33,930 enrolled Democrats in Ulster County as of Oct. 5 of this year, 5,349 were under 30 years old. By contrast, only 2,882 of the 30,635 Republicans were under 30. Meanwhile, the 9,464 Democrats over 60 years old were outnumbered by the 11,310 Republicans over 60 years old.
The trend, though a little less dramatic, is the same on the other side of the river. Some 8,182 Dutchess County Democrats were under 30 years old, as compared to 5,460 Republicans in that category. And 13,465 Dutchess Democrats were over 60 years old, outnumbered in the category by the 16,795 Republicans.
Let’s put those numbers in percentage terms, but a little differently. Some 60 percent of Dutchess County enrollees under 30 years old in the two major parties were Democrats, and 40 percent were Republicans. The corresponding figures in Ulster County as of the same date were 65 percent and 35 percent.
In Dutchess County, 44.2 percent of persons over 60 who were enrolled in one of the two major parties were Democrats, and 55.8 percent were Republicans. In Ulster County the corresponding proportions were not much different: 45.6 percent and 54.4 percent.
Competing for a base
To recapitulate, roughly 60 out of every 100 new young voters in the two counties are Democrats, and 55 of every 100 older voters are Republicans. Over the decades, the cumulative effect of the change these proportions bring about has had a profound effect on the body politic of the region.
“We kill in that demographic group,” explains Dan French, Dutchess’s Democratic assistant elections commissioner and Beekman town councilman. Young people are “more of a base” for the Democrats, says French. He feels that the Iraqi war and other policies of the Bush administration have accelerated Democratic enrollment growth among young people in Dutchess County since 2003.
Dutchess elections officials have calculated the changes in party enrollment in the past eight years. Their numbers show 23.5 percent more Democrats enrolled now than in 1999, 6.8 percent more Republicans, 3.1 percent fewer enrolled Conservatives, and 15.5 percent more people not enrolled in any party. Ulster’s enrollments follow a similar pattern.
Politicians see young voters who don’t enroll in either major party as in play, an important “swing” constituency for whose long-term allegiance they keenly compete. Apolitical young people often look to the general culture to provide them clues to use in their political behavior.
With the current partial eclipse of the Conservative Party of New York State, New York minority-party enrollees have recently been tending to align more toward the liberal than the conservative side. National polls currently show “independent” (non-party-enrolled, in the New York context) voters in the Northeast tilting heavily toward the Democrats on many issues. This preference cancels out the fact the Republicans are the more consistent voters.
All Americans have a past, often experienced in a distant geographic area or retained from a particular family or cultural background. All have reasons for the political baggage with which they come. And as Alexis de Tocqueville noted almost two centuries ago, all have learned to filter political decisions through these multiple loyalties and affiliations.
All politics is local
For a variety of reasons, the southern towns of Ulster and Dutchess counties have remained more heavily Republican, as the northern towns in the same counties have trended toward the Democrats. In all of the small cities of the region, the Democrats have been consolidating their enrollment margins. And the Republicans have been more successful in general in areas where the second-home population has not been an important factor.
While reflecting larger trends, individual jurisdictions have gone their unique ways. Each municipality filters its own loyalties and affiliations.
Here are four examples, two from Dutchess County and two from Ulster:
In 1974 there were almost three times as many Republicans (3,918) as Democrats (1,425) in the northern Ulster township of Saugerties. For the Democrats to win in a partisan match-up would have, in practical terms, taken the votes of nearly all the 2,578 persons not enrolled in a Saugerties major party. The Republican nomination was usually tantamount to election.
By 2002 the Democratic enrollment had doubled in number, and the minority Democrats had whittled their enrollment deficit to under 900 enrollees: 3,701 to 2,806. With town supervisor Greg Helsmoortel, who has been a Republican, a Democrat and a non-party enrollee, unopposed for re-election this year and running on the Democratic line, the difference is down to just under 400, with 3,233 Democrats versus 3,626 Republicans.
Meanwhile, the southern Ulster town of Marlborough remains a Republican bulwark. The 2002 enrollment figures showed only the slightest weakening of the two-to-one GOP enrollment edge in the town. The latest 2007 figures show a narrowing, but not much. There are now 2,095 enrolled Republicans, 1,220 enrolled Democrats, and 1,370 persons not enrolled in any party.
The numbers are deceiving. Of the jurisdictions in Dutchess County, elections statistics show the City of Poughkeepsie and the town of Red Hook leading in terms of proportion of under-30s enrolling as Democrats rather than Republicans. In Red Hook there were 838 young Democrats and only 229 young Republicans. In Poughkeepsie there were 1,032 under-30 Democrats and 276 Republicans.
Poughkeepsie residents lean generally and increasingly toward the Democrats. In 2002 there were a total of 6,198 Democrats and 2,992 Republicans in the city. This year there are 6,323 Democrats and 2,676 Republicans. Other Mid-Hudson cities share the pattern: more Democrats and fewer Republicans.
Red Hook is different. True, the Republican-Democratic ratio reversed from 2,093-1,725 five years ago to 2,112-2,459 this year. But that Democratic enrollment surge was caused largely by Bard College students, who historically have been notoriously uninterested in local elections. The town’s fifth election district along the east bank of the Hudson River, including Bard, has enrolled 570 Democrats and 93 Republicans.
The gap between Red Hook’s major parties at the voting booth continues to narrow. In the last local election in 2005, the Republican candidates for the town board, Sue Crane and James Ross, relied on the Conservative line to put them over the top. And the Democrats have won an increasing share of local contests over the years.
The push and pull of local politics continues, albeit in the shadow of a long-term Democratic tide. A shift in allegiance is not necessarily a bad thing. As the Mid-Hudson area pulls away from its upstate pedigree and attaches itself politically through time to the great megalopolis to its south, there will be new trends and new opportunities.