Post-Election Campaign Narrative
In this post, I'm going to do a deep dive on my home state, New York, and evaluate (1) how well the polls did in predicting its Democratic Vote Share and (2) whether state-specific campaigning impacted either Kamala Harris' or Donald Trump's performance there.Overview of New York State
New York is the 4th largest state in the U.S. by population and ranked 30th in terms of land-area. Located in the Northeastern United States, it's generally considered part of the "blue wall" on American electoral maps. Southern New York--the New York City Metropolitan Area--is very densely populated, while the North and West of the state tend to be more rural, with the exception of cities in Ithaca, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo, and the capitol in Albany. New York's population has decreased over time; it has lost seats in the House of Representatives and votes in the electoral college (most recently losing 1 seat/vote after the collection of the 2020 Census).About 20% of New Yorkers identified as Hispanic/Latino in the 2020 Census. Of the remaining 80%, about 4% identified as having multiple racial identities, 65% (of 80%) identified as white, 17% identified as black or African American, 0.3% identified as American Indian or Native Alaskan, 12% identified as Asian or Pacific Islander, and 1.2% identified with another racial group.
According to the 2023 American Communities Survey, the median household income in New York is $82,095 which is about $2,000 above the national median. The mean income, by contrast is $122,227, suggesting that there are a few very wealthy New Yorkers whose salaries pull up the average. This is unsurprising given that Manhattan is a hub of business and commerce with a very high cost of living.
In terms of education, 40.6% of New Yorkers have received a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to 36.2% of all Americans. In terms of age, New York State has a similar distribution to the entire United States. It has large proportions of people in their late twenties and early thirties, and late fifties and early sixties, but relatively small proportions of children/adolescents. Below are two Population Pyramids from the U.S. Census Bureau breaking down the population of the U.S. by age and of New York State by age in 2024, respectively.
According to the University of Florida’s Election Lab, the Voting Aged Population in New York State was 15,566,053 and the Voting Eligible Population was 13,867,180 in 2024. The state had a 57.87% turnout rate among eligible voters. The chart below shows how this compares to the turnout rate in New York State in Presidential Election Years since 1980.
In addition to the President, New Yorkers voted for one Senate Seat, all House Representatives, all State Senate Seats, and all State Assembly Seats in 2024. In the Senate Race, the incumbent, Kirsten Gillibrand was elected to her third full term. In the House Races, Democrats won 19 seats and Republicans won 7 seats. New York flipped 3 seats since the 2022 midterm elections, all towards Democrats. The composition of the State Senate is 41 Democrats, 21 Republicans, with one vacancy. The composition of the State Assembly is 100 Democrats, 48 Republicans, with two vacancies. Since 2022, this marks a shift of 1 State Senate seat towards Republicans and 6 State Assembly seats towards Republicans.
Forecasts versus Reality
In all expert forecasts, New York was projected to “vote blue” in the 2024 Presidential Race, and this result was realized. Kamala Harris achieved 55.9% of the vote share in New York State and Donald Trump received 44.1%. Compared to recent elections, including the 2020 Presidential Race, this was a smaller margin of Democratic Victory in New York. But it wasn’t that far off from pre-Election Day polls. The table below shows a summary of expert forecasts and their predicted vote share for Harris in New York State.
In 2024, Harris only beat Trump by 11 points in New York State. In 2020, Joe Biden beat Trump by 23 points. This does not mean that Biden would have been a stronger candidate than Harris in New York in 2024, however. In fact just one month into the Harris campaign (August 2024) she was leading Donald Trump by 14 points in New York, which is 6 points greater than the margin than Joe Biden had held. The fact that Harris only won the state by 11 points in November (meaning that her support in New York waned over time) may indicate that Biden’s drop from the race and Harris’ quick gain of support had the effect of a “shocking shift” on this election, and that it was a shock that New Yorkers were responsive to. Generally, “shocking shifts” have dramatic but short-lived effects on candidate polling and approval, and can be more helpful/harmful if they occur closer to Election Day. Another explanation is that, since Biden’s drop and Harris’ campaign launch were subjects of national news, they were on the minds of New Yorkers in August. But then, as the campaign focused its energy on the seven swing states (more on this later), the name ‘Harris’ may have become less salient in the minds of many New Yorkers, causing them to lose excitement about the campaign.
My Own Forecast in New York
New York was one of the anomalous states in my model. I predicted that Kamala Harris would receive only 49.2% of the vote share there. Though I had a gut feeling that this would be off (that Harris would easily win New York State) I chose not to introduce bias into my model in the name of greater accuracy. A theory for why my model may have failed in New York State is that my data went back to 1972. In 1972, New York was part of a "red wave" that voted for President Nixon. Again in 1980 and 1984, New York voted for the Republican President Ronald Reagan. It's possible that if the variables in my dataset resembled conditions in those three years, my model may have favored the Republican candidate. In a future iteration of my model, I would consider restricting the timeframe, or at least using variables that reflect temporal trends (these could be how the state voted in the last election or two or demographic data). Though I used demographic data in my model, I could have put greater weight on it than on economic fundamentals to capture temporal trends. This is because demographic information in a state tends to change more gradually than economic fundamentals, or be more indicative about what year/time period the data from the state was collected in.Campaign Narratives in the State
A prevailing narrative is that the Harris Campaign was nonexistent in New York State. Overall, the Harris campaign focused its energies (and limited campaign days) in the seven swing states, of which New York was not one. It's difficult to find a map of Harris field offices for the state of New York, or documentation of mass campaign rallies/events held there.Donald Trump, on the other hand, held several big rallies in New York State. Two were in the south of the state, which tends to lean liberal. In September of 2024, he held a rally on Long Island, which was considered a swing region of the state. It likely helped him win support in Nassau County, a swing district in the Western portion of Long Island. This year, Harris only received 47.9% of the vote share in Nassau County. He also held a mega-rally at Madison Square Garden in late October 2024 (about 1 week before Election Day). Despite its situation in the middle of an ultra-liberal New York City, Trump’s rally attracted around 19,000 attendees. Interestingly, Trump did not hold any rallies in upstate New York, where he tends to comfortably receive a lot of support.
Neither Harris nor Trump identified as a “New Yorker” even though Trump spent significant amounts of time there as a television personality. Neither of their running mates were from New York either, so neither campaign had the opportunity to garner a “hometown support base” or appeal to local community ideals in their New York State campaigns.
"Types" of Campaigns Run by Each Candidate
When Kamala Harris entered the 2024 U.S. Presidential Race, she immediately started polling better than Joe Biden, in general and particularly among specific racial and social groups. In New York State, for example, she gained the support of 81 percent of black voters, compared to Biden’s 59. This doesn’t mean that Harris had an absolute advantage, however. In fact, according to Political Scientist Lynn Vavreck, Harris was the underdog, in the national race and in state-specific races. By running for an incumbent party in a bad economy, in a nation trying to manage multiple global crises, Harris had the lower hand. The data in New York State is consistent with this: In August 2024, over half of New Yorkers (61 percent) believed that the nation was headed in the wrong direction.
In her 2009 book, The Message Matters, Vavreck advocates that candidates in Harris’ position should run “insurgent campaigns,” in which they select an issue they can be popular on (which is not the economy, or in the 2024 case specifically, not wars abroad or border security) and which their opponent is not popular on, and campaign on that. For Harris, a natural insurgent issue to campaign on would have been abortion. Harris did campaign on her commitment to making reproductive care safe and accessible to women everywhere, but in New York State specifically, this issue probably did not help her overcome the poor public outlook on the economy because it was included as a separate ballot proposition. On the other side of their ballot in 2024, New Yorkers voted to incorporate protections for access to the abortion procedure and reproductive care into the state’s constitution. The ballot proposal (colloquially known as ‘Prop 1’) passed with 62.5% favorability. It’s likely that New Yorkers found it easier to ignore Harris’ messaging about abortion knowing that it had a chance of being protected in their state regardless of the presidential outcome, and voted for president on basis of the economy/fundamentals instead.