nyc mayor race

[dazzleman]

Democrats outnumber Republicans by a wide margin in New York, and the only part of the city that is really Republican is Staten Island, and it is small.

But at the local level, regardless of party, the city is divided by race, and as a result, Republicans have been competitive in every mayoral election since 1989, when racial tensions were particularly bad.

Blacks and poorer hispanics are strongly Democratic, while working class whites and upwardly mobile hispanics go toward the Republicans in mayoral elections.  The swing vote is the guilty white liberal Manhattan elite, who will only stick with the blacks to a certain point.  In 1989, these voters favored Democrat David Dinkins, but in 1993, things were so bad that many of them defected to Giuliani, and stuck with him in 1997.

In 2001, the racial resentment that the Democrats have been milking for so long bit them in the azz when a white candidate beat a hispanic in the Democratic primary, causing some blacks to stay home in protest, and causing some hispanics to vote for Bloomberg.

Working class white voters and upwardly mobile hispanics fear the return of a mayor who is either black or dependent upon black support, because blacks don't support the aggressive anti-crime measures that have brought the city's crime rate down by 60%.  They fear that under a Democratic mayor, blacks will have a free pass, effectively, to commit crimes in their neighborhoods, as they did under Dinkins.  For that reason, they will continue to vote Republican.

[dazzleman]

Dazzleman: do you know where there's detailed (by borough and lower if possible) results of NY Mayoral and etc elections?

I remember reading detailed results on the elections, to the precinct level within the boroughs, in the NY Times.  So you could try the NY Times archives, but I don't know if stuff that's more than a year or so old is available online.

Another source could be either the New York City Board of Elections, or the board of elections at the state level.

If you know the racial and ethnic composition of New York City neighborhoods, as I generally do, it was striking in the past few elections to see the racial divisions show up in the voting numbers, with huge differences in voting among adjacent communities depending upon the predominant race of the residents.

[dazzleman]

Thanks

I hope you can find what you're looking for.