NY-09, Special Election Thread

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It's dangerous to over-analyse this sort of thing (and even more dangerous to project forward too far ahead wrt to the seat itself), but I think it's fair to say that this is not a good sign for Obama. Special factors can be reeled out to explain away a large part of it, I suppose (certainly the circumstances and the candidate didn't help), but, fundamentally, the Democratic Party should not loose immigrant-heavy districts in New York City (much as the contemporary Republican Party should not have lost certain districts in the Deep South a few years ago). If such a thing happens, panic is absolutely the wrong response (it is always the wrong response), what ought to happen is a careful reassessment of certain things...

That might look a little stream of consciousness, but consider the time out here by the banks of the Menai.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Oh, yeah. Losing safe seats in this way sucks. Not the end of the world though, even if it might briefly feel that way.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Couple of points:

1. The district is not entirely Jewish (it isn't even majority Jewish; working off the ACS data I posted way up thread, only 68.6% of the district is white and Italian and Irish ancestries came out at 20.7%. Of course there can be double counting in the latter, but my point isn't hard to grasp, I hope), not all Jews in the district are Orthodox, and not all Orthodox Jews in the district are the sort that wear those nifty black hats and vote with such remarkable discipline when an election is deemed to matter. So you can't just point to specifically Jewish (and by that you actually mean specifically Orthodox and/or Soviet and so on; basically an Other, I suppose) and pin this defeat on that. Obviously when a key swing block says 'fyck you', there's trouble ahead. But it is not enough on its own, not when its perfectly possible for a Democrat to win this district while losing such voters by miles.

2. It's not an affluent suburban district either, even if does have a few affluent residential areas here and there. This is a basically working class district with some richer parts and a massive immigrant population (only a minority of its inhabitants speak English as a first language ffs). It's certainly not poverty stricken and is less working class (significantly so) than most of the districts it borders, but then it's in Brooklyn and Queens.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Anybody have the racial make up of the district, especially the Queens section?

Posted repeated in this thread.

White: 68.6%
Black: 4.7%
Hispanic: 15.8%
Asian: 17.5% (of which 50.7% are Chinese and 24.7% Indian)
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Italian: 12.6%
Irish: 8.1%
Russian: 7.8%
German: 5.1%
Polish: 4.8%
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Anglophone: 48.2%
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Born Abroad: 40.2% (of which 64.6% are citizens)

ACS data.

Don't have any exact breakdowns for the specific parts of the district, but (and this is according to the 2000 census because I'm being semi-lazy) the Queens section seems to include both the whitest and least-white parts of the district. Blacks live mostly in the northern extreme of the Brooklyn section (bordering NY-10) and the east/central part of the Queens section. Asians seem to mostly live in Sheepshead Bay* in the Brooklyn section and the eastern half of the Brooklyn section. Main concentration of Hispanics seems to be in the southern bit of the Queens section.

*I think, though may be wrong. That kind of area anyway.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Once again, why does everyone think this district is Tel Aviv West? Of course it has a massive (and diverse) Jewish population, but then it's majority white and in New York City...

Look, if this result can be seen as any kind of warning, it isn't really because of the district's Jewishness (not directly, anyway). Your hat wearers (can people who are not Orthodox Jews buy those, by the way?) and so on will not be voting for him anyway, and I somehow doubt that all non-Jewish groups in the district voted for Weprin...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Bob Turner is not Jewish.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Surveys like that tend not to be worth the paper they're printed on, though that particular pattern is obviously true. To repeat, the cause for concern isn't anything specific to Jewish voters in the district.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Thanks for posting the map. Looks as expected (basically), but will look over the details after I've done some more work...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

More to the point (maybe?) it is a distraction from the patterns that are genuinely troubling .

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Behavior of that sort doesn't do anyone any favours.

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Anyways, that's quite a bit closer, right? The same thing happened in this district at the last normal election. So... if his election had been a tad closer, would it have bee possible for a wrong winner to declare victory and get seated (I think that's the American term)?