Clinton Claims the Empire State
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April 20, 2016
Hillary Clinton sure does love New York. The former Empire State senator won a compelling victory in the April 19 Democratic presidential primary there, defeating Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, 58-to-42 percent. The big win also tightens her grip on the party’s nomination which many party strategists say is now beyond the realistic reach of her dogged rival, Sanders.
Clinton’s success was built on a complete sweep of the New York City metropolitan area. She won all five boroughs of New York City, as well as Nassau and Suffolk Counties on Long Island, and Orange, Rockland and Westchester Counties, in the suburban and exurban communities of the lower Hudson Valley. Outside of Gotham’s shadow, she also likely won three major urban counties in upstate New York: Monroe (Rochester), Onondaga (Syracuse) and Erie (Buffalo), where she had a slim lead over Sanders with about 94 percent of the precincts reporting.
Sanders won the other 49 of the state’s 62 counties, mostly in rural upstate New York and the middle and upper Hudson Valley area, which are dotted with college campuses. According to the television networks’ exit poll, a survey of a representative sample of voters as they left their polling stations, Sanders continued to draw support from the younger voters 18-to-24 years old: He won that cohort by almost four-to-one. Among voters 25-to-29 years old, his margin was significantly smaller than it has been in previous primaries, only 53-to-47 percent.
Among older voters, Clinton romped. Among voters 45 years or older—roughly three-fifths of all New York Democratic primary voters on Tuesday, she beat Sanders by a margin of almost two-to-one. As she has in the past, Clinton won non-white voters convincingly: She carried African-American voters by three-to-one, and Hispanics by almost 30 percentage points. Clinton also managed split among white voters with white women siding with her and white men voting for Sanders.
Self-identified “very liberal” voters gave Sanders a majority of their votes, but they accounted for less than a third of the Democratic primary voters. Clinton won “somewhat liberal” and moderate Democrats by even large margins and they made up two-thirds of the primary electorate.
A plurality of Democrats told the exit poll that the economy was the most important issue facing the country and they voted three-to-two for Clinton over Sanders. Almost two-thirds of the Democratic primary voters shared the Vermont Senator’s skepticism towards New York’s citadel of finance and said that Wall Street does more to “hurt the U.S. economy” than to “help the U.S. economy.” But while Sanders has tried to make that a signature issue, among those who said Wall Street is more harmful towards the economy, he only bested Clinton by roughly 54-to-46 percent.
Sanders was also unable to gain traction on another key issue of his, trade. Asked whether trade with other countries “creates more U.S. jobs” or “takes away U.S. jobs,” a plurality said that it was a positive. Those voters backed Clinton by a three-to-two margin. Among those who said trade hurts, she roughly split those voters with Sanders. (A little more than one-tenth of the voters said that trade had no impact on jobs.)
While Clinton only padded her lead in pledged delegates by about 33 from the results in New York, by continuing to add to her advantage over Sanders, the Vermont Senator’s path to the Democratic nomination becomes increasingly difficult. Some party activists, like veteran Florida Democratic strategist Steve Schale, believe it’s all but impossible for Sanders to prevail. Given the Democratic system for awarding delegates proportionately in primaries and caucuses, Schale, who pushed for Vice President Joe Biden to enter the Democratic presidential race last year, wrote recently “there is no path, and there is no math” for Sanders to win the party’s nod in Philadelphia this summer.
Next week, five states with roughly 384 delegates, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island will hold primaries on April 26, the last big delegate bonanza until the primaries on June 7, when Democrats in California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota (caucus) and South Dakota will cast ballots for nearly 700 delegates. For Sanders to have any hope of wrestling the nomination away from Clinton he must score multiple victories on April 26—including in Pennsylvania—as big as Clinton’s win in New York to regain momentum for his campaign. That’s a tall order for the underdog.
James A. Barnes is a senior writer for Ballotpedia and co-author of the 2016 edition of the Almanac of American Politics. He is a member of the CNN Decision Desk and is helping to project the Democratic and Republican winners throughout the election cycle.
See also
- Presidential election in New York, 2016
- Presidential candidates, 2016
- Presidential debates (2015-2016)
- Presidential election, 2016/Polls
- 2016 presidential candidate ratings and scorecards
- Presidential election, 2016/Straw polls
