Cuomo v. Teachout

[Linus Van Pelt]

The geographical divide in upstate New York is there even if you leave out the cities where one would expect a GOTV machine. And it's not really the traditional Western New York vs. the rest distinction. There is some loose correlation with the 2012 presidential swing.

[Linus Van Pelt]

The geographical divide in upstate New York is there even if you leave out the cities where one would expect a GOTV machine. And it's not really the traditional Western New York vs. the rest distinction. There is some loose correlation with the 2012 presidential swing.

I still see Western NY standing out. Even where Cuomo's winning Upstate counties, he's not winning by much - except west of the Genesee River, where he's well above 60% in most counties.

Yeah, I see what you mean, especially now that more Finger Lakes counties come in.

[Linus Van Pelt]

The geographical relationship between the Cuomo/Teachout map and the fracking issue is complex. Below are two maps, one of municipal fracking bans (note that yellow just indicates a "movement" which may not have much support), and the other of municipal resolutions of support for fracking. The Utica Shale extends farther north and east than the Marcellus Shale but is also deeper and harder to access.

We can roughly distinguish three rural regions. First, in the southern tier, which has close ties to Pennsylvania, fracking appears to have local support. This region was fairly pro-Cuomo, though less strongly than the Buffalo area. Second, there is a region extending from the Finger Lakes along the Erie Canal and down into the Catskills that also has natural gas supplies but where anti-fracking sentiment is strong. This region was somewhat mixed but has some of Teachout's strongest counties. Third, the North Country and the eastern side of the Hudson Valley actually does not have natural gas reserves and would not be a fracking area. These were generally strong Teachout areas. How much fracking issues are locally relevant here, I'm not sure.

[Linus Van Pelt]

I realize there's something about this whole affair I don't understand, in terms of New York law: given that the primary is run by the state for multiple parties, why didn't the Working Families Party have a primary on the same day, rather than determining its ballot line earlier at some sort of convention, as it did?

[Linus Van Pelt]

So the party can choose whether to select its candidate in a state-run primary or not?