With all the discussion of how Paterson's selection to fill Hillary Clinton's seat affects Democrats' prospects of holding the seat, I thought it might be instructive to take a look at how much more Democratic New York State has become over the past 25 years or so. Here's a chart of how New York State voted in each presidential election since 1980 and how that compares to the rest of the country. The number in the first column is how much the Democratic presidential candidate won by in NYS, the number in the second is how much he won by nationwide (it's negative if the Republican won) and the third column is the first column minus the second.
Year NYS US NYS - US
1980 - 2.67% - 9.7% 7.03%
1984 - 8.01% - 18.2% 10.19%
1988 4.10% - 7.8% 11.90%
1992 14.85% 5.30% 9.55%
1996 28.86% 8.50% 20.36%
2000 25.00% 0.50% 24.50%
2004 18.29% - 2.5% 20.79%
2008 25.50% 7.2% 18.30%
As you can see, New York State tended to vote about 10% more Democratic than the country as a whole in 1980-1992 and about 20% more Democratic than the nation as a whole in 1996-2008. That's a big jump. And it's probably no coincidence that the shift happened when southerners essentially took over the Republican party in 1994.
The last Republican Senator from New York State was Al D'Amato. You may recall that he first got in in 1980 by defeating liberal Republican Jacob Javits in the primary and then edging out Liz Holtzman by 1 point in the general with the help of Javits (who ran on the Liberal Party line and drew union and other progressive support which otherwise would likely have gone to Holtzman). D'Amato won a resounding reelection victory in 1986 and then won a squeaker in 1992 over Robert Abrams after a famously nasty Democratic primary which left Abrams badly wounded politically. D'Amato was then soundly defeated by Chuck Schumer in 1998. Here's a chart summarizing that:
Year D'Amato Dem Javits
1980 45.00% 44.00% 11.00%
1986 57.70% 40.90% *
1992 49.00% 47.80% *
1998 45.00% 55.00% *
It's been awfully tough for Republicans at the federal level in NYS since 1996 and their situation wasn't that great before 1996 either.
The bottom line here is that any good Democratic candidate will likely cruise to victory in 2010. There's no need for Kennedy "star power" but neither is there a need to pick an upstater to make inroads in the upstate vote (though personally I would like to see an upstater chosen). A solid Democratic Senator -- regardless of his or her last name, gender, or zip code will win a solid victory in 2010.
And obviously all of that's doubly true if Peter King is the Republican nominee.
What this means is that if you think Brian Higgins would be a great Senator, there's really no need to argue about whether or not he'd be stronger politically than Caroline Kennedy or Andrew Cuomo. And if you think Caroline Kennedy would be a great Senator, there's really no need to argue about whethe or not you think she'd be stronger than Brian Higgins or Andrew Cuomo. And so on. There's every reason to believe that New York State Democrats can vote with their beliefs, rather than with their political calculations. |
