Live Blog: Extra! Extra! New York Votes!
Posted: April 19, 2016 Filed under: 2016 elections, Live, Live Blog | Tags: New York Primary Returns 222 Comments
U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (C) rides the New York City Subway with Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz (L) in the Bronx borough of New York, April 7, 2016. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY – RTSE18E
Good Evening!
New York is excited to play a role in the primaries and we’re excited to see them close a few deals! The two leading candidates for each party call New York City home so there’s high hopes on all sides for big surprises. So far, there are a few surprises prior to any results actually coming in. We’re hearing some interesting things about voting irregularities and those colorful New York Politicians.
Have Brooklyn Democrats been kidnapped by Aliens or administrative Hanky Panky?
Mayor Bill de Blasio has ordered the New York City Board of Elections to investigate why more than 63,000 registered Democrats were dropped from the voting rolls since last fall.
The request comes the same day a WNYC analysis revealed the largest decline in active registered Democrats statewide was in Brooklyn. (UPDATE: The New York state Attorney General’s Office is now reporting a spike in problems at polls, particularly in Brooklyn.)
But new data provided by the city Board of Elections on Monday indicates it actually removed 126,000 Brooklyn Democrats from the rolls, according to executive director Michael Ryan.
That includes 12,000 people who moved out of the borough, 44,000 people who were moved from active to inactive voter status and 70,000 voters removed from the inactive voter list.
As a Brooklyn Democrat himself, de Blasio said he’s concerned about the sudden slump of Democrats on the voter rolls there.
“This number surprises me,” said de Blasio, “I admit that Brooklyn has had a lot of transient population – that’s obvious. Lot of people moving in, lot of people moving out. That might account for some of it. But I’m confused since so many people have moved in, that the number would move that much in the negative direction.”
Board of Elections Executive Director Michael Ryan confirmed he had been contacted by the mayor’s staff and he shared with WNYC the same explanation he said he gave them.
“Brooklyn was a little behind with their list maintenance tasks,” said Ryan, who said the other boroughs update their lists on a rolling basis.
That backlog meant the Brooklyn voter rolls needed a major clean up. The board can only remove people from its lists at certain times of year. There are blackout periods that exist 90 days before federal elections.
Ryan said Brooklyn election officials fell 6 months to a year behind updating their voter rolls.
New York Rep. Pete King (R) on Tuesday offered his harshest words yet for Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, slamming the Texas senator on the day of his state’s primary.
“Well, first of all, in case anybody gets confused, I’m not endorsing Ted Cruz, I hate Ted Cruz, and I think I’ll take cyanide if he ever got the nomination,” King said to open his appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” prompting a mixture of laughs and mild exclamations from co-hosts.The Republican has previously said that he’d “never” vote for Cruz and that New Yorkers considering it “should have their head examined.”“I think you are going to see Donald Trump scoring a big victory tonight,” King predicted Tuesday. “I have not endorsed Donald Trump. In fact, I actually voted by absentee ballot for John Kasich. I’m not endorsing John, but I voted for him to really send a message.”
Michael Bloomberg says there’s a connection between Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.The two presidential candidates elude facts and attract voters with rhetoric, the former mayor of New York City said at a keynote speech for a Bloomberg Philanthropies summit Tuesday.“I’m not trying to knock Donald Trump, but I do think what you’re seeing in this election, in some cases you argue on the facts, in some cases it becomes a religion — the facts don’t matter at all,” Bloomberg said.“And that phenomenon, I think, is what you see with Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. It’s the same phenomenon,” he continued. “People are not happy with their government. It has failed them. It hasn’t addressed their needs.”The basic point may not surprise anyone who’s followed the long campaign trail this election season. Sanders, who is seeking the Democratic nomination, has recently been criticized — perhaps unfairly — for failing to correctly articulate the facts behind his views on big banks. The less said about Republican hopeful Trump’s flip-flopping, the better.But Bloomberg wasn’t really talking about the election. The conference Tuesday was a “Summit on Transforming Data Into Action,” and his keynote was meant to illustrate how cities and businesses can harness big data to improve communities and help citizens. Bloomberg’s point was that most people can’t argue with the facts, even if certain leaders might try.
Conservatives/evangelicals: In preliminary exit poll results, evangelicals are in short supply, as are strong conservatives – groups customarily better for Cruz. Evangelicals account for about a quarter of voters in preliminary exit poll results (vs. 42 percent in Wisconsin and 58 percent in all primaries to date). “Very” conservatives account for two in 10 voters, vs. 31 percent in Wisconsin and 34 percent overall.
Wall Street: We’ve noted that more than six in 10 Democratic primary voters say Wall Street does more to hurt than help the U.S. economy; turns out the Street isn’t widely popular among Republican primary voters, either. They divide about evenly on whether Wall Street helps or hurts the economy.
Outsider: Trump may reach a new high on his signature issue: Nearly two-thirds of GOP primary voters in these preliminary exit poll results are looking for an outsider rather than someone with political experience. Outsider voters, a group Trump’s won overwhelmingly in past contests, peaked previously at 61 percent in Nevada.
So maybe Democrats are bit more unified than we thought – at least compared with Republicans.
Eighty-five percent of New York Democratic primary voters in the exit poll say they will definitely or probably vote for Hillary Clinton if she becomes the Democratic presidential nominee.
Just 13 percent of them say they WON’T vote for her.
That’s compared with 26 percent of New York Republicans who say that they wouldn’t vote for Trump if he becomes the GOP nominee.
And it’s also compared with an Indiana exit poll during the height of the 2008 Barack Obama-vs.-Hillary Clinton race, which found 29 percent of Democratic voters saying they would either vote for John McCain or not vote at all.
A few weeks ago, we published a sort of best-case scenario for Sanders in which he wound up with exactly 2,026 pledged delegates, the number he’d need to clinch an elected delegate majority over Clinton. (Leave aside the thorny issue of superdelegates for now.) The path would require almost everything to go right for Sanders — including narrow wins in states such as Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and double-digit wins in California, Indiana and other states.Sanders has had a good couple of weeks, however. He fell only two delegates shy of our path-to-2,026 projection in Wisconsin. He also fell four delegates shy in Wyoming, where his results were disappointing. However, Sanders has gained a few extra delegates at state conventions and from previous states revising their delegate counts as their results became official. Because of these changes, Sanders has kept exactly on pace with the path to 2,026 so far.
Tonight’s task is much harder, however. Our path had Sanders winning New York by a couple of percentage points and netting 128 out of 247 delegates there. Here’s what the rest of his path would look like on the unlikely-but-not-quite impossible chance that he does so:
New York primary
Last poll closes at 9:00 PM ET
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