Like many parts of the country on Tuesday that elected Donald Trump president of the United States, New York state shifted to the right in ways it hasn’t in a long time.
There are still votes to count and New York will certify its election results in a few weeks, offering a full snapshot of how the state acted politically, but there’s a lot to take away for now from the results.
Vice President Kamala Harris carried the state and its 28 electoral votes, continuing the Democratic dominance at the presidential level that has ensued in every cycle since 1988, but she is on track to have the worst performance for a Democratic nominee in the state since Michael Dukakis in that same election 36 years ago.
According to the latest unofficial results via the Associated Press, with 97% of the expected vote counted, Harris has won 4,336,686 votes to Trump’s 3,434,654. As of right now, Harris is underperforming Biden’s raw vote total by nearly 1 million votes and Trump is outperforming his own raw vote total from 2020 by nearly 200,000 votes, and by more than 600,000 votes than his 2016 total.
Harris’ margin of victory, 55.8%-44.2%, is just 11.6 points, only half of Biden’s 23-point win four years ago. Trump is the first Republican nominee since George W. Bush in 2004 to garner more than 40% of the vote in the Empire State. The pattern was the same for the former president in several other reliably blue Northeastern states like New Jersey.
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As of now, Trump flipped five New York counties Biden won in 2020 — Nassau, Broome, Clinton, Rockland and Essex — the latter of which is very close and could still flip back when all votes are accounted for. Nassau County, in particular, swung 14 points to the right from four years ago, reinforcing a Republican takeover of Long Island that has taken place over the last four years. In nearby Suffolk County, Trump just barely carried it in 2020 by 232 votes. This year, he is winning it by more than 79,000, an 11-point swing. Rockland County in the lower Hudson Valley swung 13 points to the right.
Harris still carried the traditional Democratic counties that hold upstate’s large cities of Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Albany, as well as Ithaca’s Tompkins County, but underperformed Biden in all of them. She did hang onto counties in the eastern part of the state Biden won in 2020 – Saratoga, Schenectady, Rensselaer, Columbia, Ulster, Dutchess and Westchester.
Harris also still overwhelmingly won New York City, but also by substantially less than Biden, winning Queens with 62% of the vote when Biden won it by 72%, and winning the Bronx with 73% of the vote compared to Biden’s 84%. Brooklyn also voted 6 points more for Trump than it did in 2020. All told on Tuesday, Harris had about 573,000 fewer votes in New York City than Biden did and Trump gained more than 94,000 additional voters compared to the last time he was on the ballot.
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By raw votes, the candidates are running the closest in Essex County, with Trump ahead by just 72 votes, with 96% of the expected vote in there. Broome, Ontario and Rensselaer counties have the candidates separate by less than 1,000 votes. On a vote margin basis, Trump’s best performing county was Wyoming County, where he earned 76% of the vote, and Harris did best in Manhattan, getting 82% of the vote. Both were also Trump and Biden’s best counties respectively in 2020.
The state’s electors will meet in Albany in December to cast their 28 electoral votes for Harris and Tim Walz. Post-2020 Census, this is the first time New York has 28 votes in the Electoral College, the fewest amount since the presidential election in 1808.