New York state without New York City

[Penelope]

I thought you guys might enjoy this.

On alternate history.com, somebody made a thread about how one might divide New York. I had the concept of two states. The first, New York, was New York City and the major population centers around it. The second, Niagara, was the rest of New York state. This obviously gave me the idea of seeing how a divided New York would fair in Presidential elections. The result was this:

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Really, all separating New York City and its surrounding population centers does is give the Democrats free electoral votes. Truthfully though, I'm almost surprised that Barack Obama didn't get more here. He's fallen just short of 70%, bringing this state on par with Vermont's performance in 2008.

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But this is really the interesting result. Without New York City, the rest of New York state was closer than Wisconsin, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania in 2008. A lean-D state to be sure, but I'm interested to see if Romney might win the region this year, or if Bush did in 2000 or 2004.

[Person Man]

Upstate New York is a lot like New Hampshire it seems.

[sentinel]

Interesting idea, but why did you cut it the way you did re-the long sliver jetting northward on NY

[Jerseyrules]

Interesting idea, but why did you cut it the way you did re-the long sliver jetting northward on NY

I don't know much about upstate politics, but I'd assume because they're strongly democratic, despite being upstate.

Also, why did NY become so liberal?  I'm assuming it started in 1992 but why?  How did a lean-D swing state (with at least one GOP senator from 1953-1999) become one of the most strongly democratic states in the union?

[DC Al Fine]

Cutting New York up would be long long time ago, when the New York suburbs were little villages/farmland, which could mean they'd have wound up in Niagara. I could see some of those left leaning New York suburbs making Niagara lean D a bit more than you postulate.

[Penelope]

The Hudson river seemed to be a nice natural border for the region. I debated putting Albany in the NYC area, but the Hudson River seemed like a better border to me.

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Also, I had some free time and decided to see what the results were like for the 2000 election.

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[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Any elections where Republicans might win it wherein real life they didn't?

[Penelope]

Any elections where Republicans might win it wherein real life they didn't?

2004 is a possibility. It's quite possible that it would've been a Lean-R state before 1980-1992.