A couple weeks into the Biden debate performance fallout and months into the dissatisfaction with his approach to Israel and its war in Gaza, some New York Democrats seem ready to sit the November election out, in part due to the belief that it won’t really matter. This is a deep blue state with some cherry red areas, the thinking goes, and there’s no chance for a Biden loss here, so why not use the occasion to send an electoral message? But the fundamental question is, is this actually true? Is staying home all the same to Democrats in New York?
It’s unlikely that enough people would stay home or register some sort of protest vote that it could conceivably imperil Biden’s win in New York State. The last time New York went for a Republican candidate was in 1984 when Ronald Reagan devoured Walter Mondale with a 49-state sweep in which Mondale only won his home state of Minnesota and the District of Columbia. The only time a Republican has gotten more than 40% of the vote in the last three decades was in 2004 when George W. Bush got… 40.08% and still trailed John Kerry by over 18 points. Trump got just under 38% in the last election, largely in line with longtime GOP performance. A Biden loss here just doesn’t seem to be in the cards.
Obviously, a Biden loss in the state isn’t impossible — there are plenty of Democrats opting out or switching votes — but it’s probably not the main concern for the state’s Democratic party. There is significant danger for the party from a lack of enthusiasm for Biden, just not really at the presidential level. “Turnout is generally driven by the race at the top of the ticket,” CUNY professor John Mollenkopf, director of the Center for Urban Research and urban data wonk, wrote to me. “It seems unlikely to me that [Trump’s] 37.7% vote in New York State in 2020 gets anywhere close to 50.1%, but it will rise. This creates a negative environment for Democrats in tight down-ballot races.”
As you might recall from some of our earlier coverage, Democratic underperformance in what were once blue districts is far from a theoretical issue. Most notoriously, the party got wiped out on Long Island and oversaw such a brutal midterm that New York losses are arguably the only reason Democrats don’t currently control the House of Representatives. It’s hard to say from polling or focus groups the degree to which this will be a problem. Still, recent history hasn’t looked good and even small percentages of Democrats not turning out could have a decisive impact on a variety of federal races.
So while it’s unlikely Trump will come in striking distance of winning New York as a state — and less so now in the aftermath of Trump’s criminal convictions, which seem to have moved the needle unfavorably with independents — these dynamics could determine whether he wins and comes into office with a unified control of government or not. It could also determine whether Biden wins and continues facing a chaotic and dysfunctional Congress with outsize power for a MAGA wing that will have the numbers to nuke all his policy priorities.
There might be voters who skip voting for Biden but turn up to vote for their congressional races, simply to send a message to Biden. During the (practically redundant) April primary in the state, a number of advocacy groups and activists organized a so-called “leave it blank” campaign for Democratic primary voters to leave their ballots blank as a protest vote against Biden’s handling of the Israeli bombing of Gaza. The campaign ended up with an eyebrow-raising 12% of ballots left blank, a respectable number for a pure protest vote.
That said, let’s not forget that this is 12% of a low-turnout primary that drew only hard-core voters with something to say. The presidential general election is another league entirely, and the actual proportion of voters that would turn out to vote for congressional primaries and then send a message by not voting or voting third party on the presidential ticket is likely to be very small. The causality is much more likely to go the other way: a weak turnout for the top of the ticket on the Democratic side is going to filter down to weaker performances by Democrats lower on the ticket, and by the law of percentages, this could translate to higher vote share and some potential wins for Republicans.
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is not going to lose, but individual House candidates might. In the 1st congressional district covering much of eastern Long Island, political commentator and longtime political operative John Avlon just won the Democratic primary to challenge Nick LaLota, who is within striking distance. In the 3rd district, incumbent Democratic Representative Tom Suozzi just won the special election to replace disgraced former Rep. George Santos, handily defeating GOP candidate Mazi Pilip. The Republicans are trying again with Mike LiPetri.
Hempstead GOP Rep. Anthony D’Esposito flipped the 4th district in 2022 and is facing a stiff challenge from former Town Supervisor Laura Gillen in a hotly contested rematch. Hudson Valley GOP Rep. Mike Lawler squeaked a seat flip of the 17th district with 50.32% of the vote in 2022, and now faces former Rep. Mondaire Jones. In the neighboring 18th, Democratic Rep. Pat Ryan was reelected with only 50.67% of the vote in 2022. And so on. It’s worth noting that Ryan has now become one of the handful of Democratic members of Congress to openly call for Biden to step aside, writing an opinion column imploring the president to leave the race “for the good of the country.”
The point is, whether Democrats win these seats and, potentially by consequence, retake control of the House itself seems very dependent on relative handfuls of Democratic voters turning out on Long Island, NYC’s northern suburbs, and Upstate. Now, I want to add an important caveat here: it is July. The ongoing freakout over Biden’s mental acuity and debate performance, now including several elected officials pressuring him to step aside and countless insider leaks, could well blow over by the time election day rolls around.
Of course, the big news now is the assassination attempt on Trump over the weekend, and it remains unclear how this might affect electoral dynamics. Some commentators seem convinced that it will massively help Trump, who could present himself as something of a victim and a martyr and energize his base. I’m not so sure; historically, assassination attempts haven’t been necessarily electorally positive for presidential candidates, and there’s a chance this could make Trump ramp up the violent revenge fantasy language in a way that could be alienating to independents and more moderate Republicans. On the flip side, it could make Democrats pull back on attacking Trump’s candidacy and antidemocratic plans out of some misguided sense of having to bring the country together, which would help Trump politically. It’s a bit too soon to say how this plays out, though in any case I doubt it’ll have much impact on Democratic turnout.
A lot more could happen— Trump could overturn his New York conviction after the Supreme Court blocked prosecution not only for “official acts” but for using those acts in evidence for unrelated prosecutions; inflation could keep getting better; Biden could have some additional stellar performances on the public stage that would quiet the fretting, or he could drop out altogether and stand behind Kamala Harris as his successor. I think those Dems who are pushing for Biden to stand aside but have not said Harris should be the nominee really need to detail how exactly they think that would work, and why.
For those who seem to realistically be contemplating a blank or third-party vote for Biden, the big issue appears to be the handling of Israel’s war on Gaza, and there certainly could be a lot of developments on that front between now and the election. New ceasefire talks are gaining momentum, and while Biden has been far less proactive in reining Israel in than his critics have hoped, he’s clearly fed up with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and could conceivably take a stronger stance. The one constant here is that if anyone tells you that they know what’s going to happen between now and November and on election day itself, they’re bullshitting you.
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