New York State 2014 Elections

New York State Board of Elections is still not showing all districts to have reported in, 15,018 out of 15,056. However, at this point, it's unlikely they'll update the count so the numbers used are the ones listed there currently.

With all the opposition to the SAFE Act and Common Core, why did Cuomo win?

As per NYS Board of Elections, there are currently 10,827,434 registered voters, out of a population of 19,651,127 (2013 estimate by US Census Bureau). In the 2012 presidential election, 6,976,373 people voted, 2,490,496 being Republican. In the 2008 presidential election, 7,557,716 voted, 2,752,771 being Republican. In the 2004 presidential election, 7,276,847 voted, 2,962,567 being Republican. In all presidential elections since 1960, other than 1996 when 1,933,492 people voted Republican, Republican vote has been an average of 2 to 3 million.

Cuomo won with 1,951,247 votes. If in the last 4 presidential elections, the Republican presidential candidate received more votes than that, what happened?

The answer is very simple; nobody voted. In this election, there was a total of only 3,717,366 votes, a little over 50% of the average votes cast in presidential elections. Not only that, but in New York City, the voter turn out this year, 976,467, was even worse than last year's mayoral election where only 1,087,710 people voted out of an average of 2.5 million who vote in presidential election.

While many people online commented that at their poll site upstate there was a massive voter turnout, when all is said and done, only half of the regular voters voted. In a city of 19.6M people, out of 10.8M registered voters, out of an average of 7M active voters, only 3.7M people voted.

Why did Cuomo win? Because, whether because of "My vote doesn't count" or "The Republican candidate is not perfect" or complacency or just plain laziness, people didn't vote.

The saddest part is that NYC Republicans, after last year's elections where less than 50% of regular voters bothered to vote, haven't learned their lesson and even less people showed up to vote this year.

The question you should ask yourself is, if all Republicans would register and vote, is NY really a blue state, or is it a red state after all.