How snow could affect the New York 3rd election
A nor’easter is socking the New York region today, and it’s pretty terrible timing for New York 3rd District voters. Over 8 inches of snow fell today in Glen Cove, one of the district’s major cities, and unsurprisingly, turnout is reportedly a fraction of what it was in 2022.
That could actually have a material impact on the election result: Since 2020, when Trump spread baseless concerns about the insecurity of voting by mail, Republicans have tended to vote on Election Day, while absentee voting (and, to a lesser extent, early in-person voting) has been disproportionately Democratic.
That pattern looked set to play out in this special election, too: According to Democratic operative Tom Bonier, registered Democrats outnumbered registered Republicans by 10 percentage points in the early vote and 29 points in the mail vote. And a Feb. 10-12 poll by J.L. Partners found that Suozzi led by 21 points among people who had already voted, while Pilip led by 15 among those who had not yet voted.
In other words, the people who might be stopped from voting today by the snow are more likely to be Republicans than Democrats. So if Pilip loses this race by a hair, she could have the weather to blame.
—Nathaniel Rakich, 538
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