The Sweep: Election Day in Gotham

Plus: How retirements could change the pending Senate map for the GOP.

By and
27

No quick hits today. It’s an Election Day! And if you’ve ever worked on a campaign, it means you have a lot of nervous energy and try not to think too hard about how many minutes are left in every hour until the polls close. Unless you’re on the Election Day operations team—then you’re just in an all-out panic and secretly hoping for a close race so all your furious sweeping mattered.

But most importantly, thanks to all of you in New York City who poured your hearts into these races. Whether you volunteered at a phone bank or have been on payroll since last November, we are grateful to you!

RCV in NYC

Hey, New York, Election Day is here!! Before the results come in, let’s discuss.

First, this is the Democratic primary. That’s not a caveat because I think a Republican is suddenly going to swoop in and become mayor of New York. But it means that very few people—compared to the population of the country, the state, or even the city—are going to vote today. In fact, we’re talking 10 to 12 percent of the city’s voting population deciding who will be mayor.

Keep reading with a free account
Create a free Dispatch account to keep reading Get Started ALREADY HAVE AN ACCOUNT? SIGN IN
27
By and
Comments (27)
Join The Dispatch to participate in the comments.
 
  1. Matthew

    A recurrent theme in Sarah's discussion of election coverage is that exit polls are inaccurate, and that we should instead rely on later studies to figure out the granular details of election behavior. Do we have anything good for this on the 2020 election yet? Has Sarah done a Sweep on this regarding the 2020 election yet? If not, that'd be something I'd love to see her insight on.

    Collapse
    1. Avatar photocircle-angle-nib
      Sarah Isgur vertical-nib Author

      Here you go! https://sweep.thedispatch.com/p/the-sweep-why-insurgents-win

      Collapse
  2. Avatar photo
    Angie

    Great, as always

    Collapse
  3. Avatar photo
    John D. Wright

    I like ranked choice voting but it must be computerized and fast for races where it's not super close. A super close race of course will involve hand recounts. Can't be helped.

    Collapse
  4. Jason Odegaard

    Wouldn't it be faster to count, and easier to explain, if they used Approval Voting instead of Ranked Choice Voting for the primary?

    Collapse
  5. Avatar photo
    Paul Britton

    The longer it takes to decide who won, the less confidence many people will have in the result.

    Collapse
  6. Gabriel Salas

    Conservative analysts - even the good ones like the denizens of this website - make a mistake when analysing the Chicago between party leaderships v "the base," as they apply the dynamics of the right to the democratic party.

    In the GOP, leadership follows a much more radical base, thus abandoning moderation for fringe cultural wars with a dollop of conspiracy theories.

    In the Dems, a loud group in leadership try to pull a moderate base to the left. But any time that there are wider elections - whether primaries or otherwise - the moderates win.

    In short, the republican base pulls leadership to the fringe but the democratic base anchors the party in moderation despite some in leadership pulling to the left.

    Collapse
  7. Avatar photo
    David M

    Sarah and Chris, keep up the great work!

    Collapse
  8. Avatar photo
    JohnF

    If the various administrative and legal issues associated with this exercise in RCV were well known in advance, why weren't they addressed in advance?

    Collapse
    1. Avatar photo
      Phil H

      Because people.

      Collapse
    2. Avatar photo
      MG

      I am a huge proponent of RCV as a system of elections. It's all about changing incentives.

      But I definitely won't attempt to defend why NYC politicians failed to understand how RCV would actually work given the current structure of their elections.

      My hope is that at the end of this, voters are as satisfied as possible with the eventual winner. But I've been around long enough to know that there will be a line of losers ready to blame the system as the reason for their loss. And there will be plenty of receptive ears to that message.

      Electoral change is hard. It takes time, and it requires a few cycles for voters, candidates and pundits to adapt. I still think RCV is a better structure than the current first-past-the-post status quo. But as long as our institutions are run by broken humans, the best we can hope for is the least-broken result.

      Collapse
    3. Avatar photo
      Show Jay Janney the 🚪!

      Because it's run by politicians, people not necessarily elected for their administrative/logistics acumen?

      Collapse
      1. Avatar photo
        JohnF

        Worse. It's probably being run by political "science" graduates.

        Collapse
  9. Avatar photo
    Jean-Christophe Jouffrey

    Dear Sarah Isgur and Chris Stirewalt,

    "In fact, we’re talking 10 to 12 percent of the city’s voting population deciding who will be mayor."

    Hence the undemocratic nature of the supposedly democratic primary system: your Founding Fathers were right, too much democracy kills democracy.

    Montesquieu said something to the effect that political systems are corrupted by an excess of their virtues.

    Collapse
    1. Avatar photo
      Hrodland

      Yet this is OUR stupid, undemocratic system, so we'll stand by it through thick and thin!

      Collapse
  10. Deanjens

    What does "10 days after the holding of such primary" mean? If you're still accepting ballots on June 29, does that mean July 9?

    I'm not opposed to having a drawn-out voting period, if it can be done securely; I'm tepidly opposed to making the last opportunity to vote in person earlier than the last opportunity to get ballots in by other means. I'm strongly opposed to pretending that "election day" is any day earlier than when the vote counters are in possession of all legal ballots. To the extent that there is an election "day", that seems to be June 29.

    Collapse
    1. Avatar photo
      Kmregan7

      I don't mind a drawn out voting period but I do wish there were some way that people voting early didn't decide for those who vote later. By the time my state got to voting (and this is in the general, so not necessarily applicable here) the candidate I wanted had already dropped out. That doesn't seem right.

      Collapse
Load More