Long Island Blues
A closer look at Long Island's "red trend" and its politics
In the last couple years it has become something of a common belief that Long Island is trending Republican but is that really true though and where did this belief come from? To answer the first question, not really and I assume it originates from a misinterpretation of the election results. Why did Democrats lose two normally safe House seats on Long Island in 2022? Well two incumbents not running for reelection and a historically poor performance at the top of the ticket hurt downballot candidates
There’s also off-year elections where Republicans have shown remarkable strength despite Long Island’s blue lean at the federal level. That has a fairly easy explanation. One is that turnout for local elections is lower than even midterms and that’s where party organizational strength comes into play. Long Island Republicans are well known for having much more infrastructure at the local level than their Democratic counterparts.
In the Trump era, Long Island has actually trended more towards Dems than it did in the Obama years. It’s important to look at the trend instead of the swing because compared to the past, Dems in 2022 fared pretty darn poorly on Long Island but depending on what race you’re comparing it to, things don’t look so bad. If 2012 is a high watermark for Dems in a presidential race in New York and 2022’s gubernatorial results represent a low point then when you look at the swing, almost everything in the state is red. But that doesn’t give you the whole picture. Compared to the change in statewide margin, Kathy Hochul did better than Obama in 3/4 congressional districts on Long Island. The same goes if you swapped in Chuck Schumer’s numbers instead.
Looking at the 2022 results it’s quite evident things went seriously wrong for the New York Democratic Party and Long Island’s shift to the right from 2018 is a bit more pronounced because of Congressman Lee Zeldin’s presence at the top of the ticket. Zeldin’s campaign or more accurately Hochul’s lack of a campaign severely hurt the party especially on Long Island. Compare to 2018, Long Island’s lean vs the state changed very little in the two downballot executive offices but changed dramatically in the gubernatorial race.
Much of this map shows the trends you’re all undoubtedly familiar with by now: upscale areas trend left, blue collar areas trend right. Despite the common perception of it, Long Island is actually decently educated and wealthy. However there are some other factors that take precedence over educational attainment like religiosity. You can see heavily Orthodox Great Neck trended fairly Republican and the police heavy NY-2 also trended quite substantially to the right. Similar to southwest Chicago, New York’s 2nd District is well known for being home to a substantial number of firefighters and police officers.
The 1st Congressional District which encompasses much of eastern Long Island rarely receives much discussion as a potentially competitive race this year. Per Split Ticket, Rep. Nick LaLota’s WAR score is only R+0.5 which means he did only half a point better than your generic Republican would be expected to do. The likely Democratic nominee is former CNN commentator John Avlon, who could be quite an opponent for LaLota. With TV experience he brings strong communication skills, a strong donor network, and he also has some degree of ability to self fund. Curiously all major forecasters rate this race as ‘Likely Republican’, which is rather strange given the closely divided nature of the district and LaLota’s decidedly meh performance in 2022.
Long Island was home to a competitive special election earlier this year following the expulsion of George Santos from Congress. Santos won the 3rd District in an upset in 2022 mostly thanks to Hochul’s disastrous performance at the top of the ticket. Former Rep. Tom Suozzi easily won his old seat back simply by focusing on turning out and winning back traditional Democratic voters that soured on the Governor in 2022.
Curiously another district where most major forecasters are loath to acknowledge reality in is the state’s 4th Congressional District, which is the most Democratic district held by a Republican. In Congress, Rep. Anthony D’Esposito has done little to distinguish himself from his party and endorsed Donald Trump in the primary, a move that few frontliners did. His fundraising has been anemic, suggesting the incumbent has largely given up. Sabato’s Crystal Ball and Split Ticket are the only major forecasters to acknowledge that D’Esposito is almost certainly an underdog.
To wrap things up, the big thing I want people to take away from this piece is that you can’t make sweeping generalizations based on one election. Sadly it remains simpler to make such generalizations than actually do a deep dive based on the data.