Today is primary day and 3.5 million Flori

Monday, September 25, 2006

New York: He ain't heavy, he's my downstate IP vote getter....

And while we're on the subject, there's an interesting article on the upstate/downstate divide by Joseph Spector in today's Rochester Democrat & Chronicle Upstate short in power spectrum, But impact of N.Y.C. dominance in top-level officials is debatable.

For those of you who aren't familiar with New York political jargon, upstate refers to the area of New York State outside of New York City, and upstaters refer to the City as "downstate".

About two-thirds of New York State's population resides in the five boroughs of New York City and the ratio of registered Dems in the City compared to registered Repubs is 5 to 1.

These numbers are important this year for the Independence Party whose weighted vote system involves a calculation of the votes on Column C in a statewide race. The weight has leaned "upstate" so far, coming from Rochester billionaire Tom Golisano's run for gov. The weight per vote will change in favor of the NYC operation if more votes come in from "downstate", which is likely given that Hillary and Spitzer head of the ticket.

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