New Yorkers Look Ahead to What Primary Will Bring

When New Yorkers go to the polls on Aug 23, their numbers may be startlingly low. Analysts say the rescheduling of half the state’s primaries from June to late August may catch much of the state in last-week-of-summer-vacation mode, with many would-be voters away at, say, the beach.

Turnout estimates are very low for the congressional and state Senate primaries. Politicos in various parts of the state put turnout at 10 percent, or even lower. Keith Davies, Democratic campaign manager for Suffolk County on Long Island’s eastern end, said they expect as few as 5 percent of voters to cast their ballots. Early voting numbers have been abysmal.

“No one’s voting,” he said. “It’s prime vacation time. It’s the last vacation of the summer. Or they’re moving kids back to college.”

That means getting out every single vote possible matters. Davies said he’d consider driving 45 minutes each way to the board of elections if it meant helping a single Democratic voter vote. In a regular election, it wouldn’t be worth his time. In his state Senate race, he expects no more than 5,000 people to turn out.

And there are plenty of important races, with redistricting having jumbled the state’s election map, with resignations having left seats vacant, with special elections to fill vacancies immediately being held simultaneously with the primaries for the November election.

Two longtime Democratic incumbents, Carolyn Maloney and Jerrold Nadler, are pitted against each other and facing off against attorney Suraj Patel in New York City’s 12th District. Another incumbent, Mondaire Jones, pulled out of his own district in the city’s northern suburbs to seek Nadler’s old 10th District seat in lower Manhattan. Upstate, there was an equal amount of shifting around.

One discernable trend amid the confusion, said Lincoln Mitchell, a political analyst and Columbia-affiliated professor,