cinyc
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« on: September 14, 2015, 05:54:34 PM » |
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Westchester is less non-Hispanic white (55.7%) than Nassau (63.3%) or especially Suffolk (70.1%). It has a higher percentage of people below the poverty line (9.5%) than Long Island (both counties in the 6% range). And parts are a lot more urban than Long Island. Westchester has a number of incorporated cities (Yonkers, White Plains, Mount Vernon, New Rochelle, etc.). Nassau and Suffolk have none.
Westchester is a bellwether county in New York elections, while Nassau and Suffolk are usually a little more Republican than the statewide average. In Westchester itself, the city of Yonkers usually votes more or less in line with the rest of the county. The heavily African-American city of Mount Vernon and the heavily Jewish towns of Scarsdale and Greenburgh tend to vote Democratic, while the towns of Eastchester, Harrison, Pelham and Mount Pleasant and much of the less urban northern part of the county tend to vote Republican. Those towns are generally less Jewish and more Italian.
The State Senate tried to gerrymander a Westchester State Senate seat that a Republican could theoretically win by combining some of the named towns and a few others with Republican-leaning parts of Yonkers, but so far, the district has only elected Democrats. On Long Island, Democratic-leaning portions of the counties were (so-far) successfully split between State Senate Districts so that those districts elect Republicans.
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