New York Area – Boards of Elections
Other Resources
- Find Your Polling Place & See Your Ballot – Who Is On the Ballot
- NYC Campaign Finance Board – Info on NYC Candidates, Debates, Finances, etc.
- National Jewish Democratic Council
- Republican Jewish Coalition
Election Guidelines for Nonprofit & Religious Organizations
- JCRC-NY – Russian / English
- Election Dos & Don’ts
- JCPA – Election Guidelines
- JCPA – Election Engagement Resources
JCRC-NY’s Co-chair of our Commission on Public Policy and Jewish Security, Prof. Ester Fuchs has developed a wonderful website to help voters. Her website, Who’s on the Ballot (a project of Columbia|SIPA) has been updated for the April 19th election, providing New York City voters with their registration status, polling location, non-partisan information about candidates, and complete personalized ballots all in one place, in multiple languages. To find out if you are registered to vote, where your polling place is located, and who is on your ballot, go to http://whosontheballot.org.
Jewish voters are diverse
Click here for a PDF version of this post.
(Original post: April 17, 2016) According to the 2008 exit polls, 291,000 Jews voted statewide and they chose then-Senator Hillary Clinton by a 2:1 margin. The exit polls estimated that Jews were 16% of the Democratic voters that year even though they were only approximately 9% of the total population of New York State.
Party enrollment. According to PrimeNY, Jews (or more accurately, voters with distinctive Jewish surnames) are 14% of the 3.9 million registered voters in NYC. 63% of Jewish registered voters are enrolled as Democrats and 15% as Republicans (the balance are not enrolled in a party or they are enrolled in one of the minor parties). Jews vote: they are 13% of the Democrats but 20% of the Democratic “prime” voters; 17% of the Republicans and 24% of the “prime” Republicans. The raw number and percentage of Jewish voters is likely to be higher due to the fact that many Jews do not have distinctive Jewish surnames.
Congressional districts. As the 2016 Presidential Primary draws near we’ve received many questions about, “Where the Jews Are” and how they break down by denomination.
The best downstate data come from The Jewish Community Study: 2011 from UJA-Federation of New York covering New York City, Long Island and Westchester. The results are somewhat surprising before you think about it. The plurality of Jewish voters (31%) identify themselves as “Other, no denomination”, followed by Reform (24%), Orthodox (23%) and Conservative (21%). (n.b., many Orthodox household have young children, not yet eligible to vote.
Congressman Jerrold Nadler has 140,800 Jewish voters in his district, which is Jewishly diverse: 61,800 Orthodox (most in Borough Park) and 37,800 Others (probably Westsiders). Click here to learn more about the Jewish demographics of the metropolitan area Congressional districts.
Being Jewish. It is harder to predict how Jews will vote. The Pew Research Center American data reflect nationwide trends, when we know that Orthodox Jews are the plurality here in New York.
The Pew Study concludes that nationally, Jews support the Democratic Party over the Republican Party by more than three-to-one: 70% say they are Democrats or lean toward the Democratic Party, while 22% are Republicans or lean Republican. Among Orthodox Jews, however, the balance tilts in the other direction: 57% are Republican or lean Republican, and 36% are Democrats or lean Democratic.
Special elections.
The denominational profiles of the two districts with special elections differ significantly.
|
Assembly District 65 |
Senate District 9 |
|
| Total Jewish Voters |
7,000
|
53,400
|
| Orthodox |
19%
|
26%
|
| Conservative |
21%
|
28%
|
| Reform |
26%
|
28%
|
| Reconstructionist |
3%
|
1%
|
| Other |
28%
|
16%
|
Questions – Contact – Government Relations