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In New York,general elections for governor are held every four years, in even-numbered years when there is no presidential election.^[1] General elections for the State Legislature (State Senate and State Assembly)^[2] are held in November of every even-numbered year.^[3]

New York is a state where voters typically vote forDemocratic Party candidates.^[4] As of 2025, there are more than twice as many enrolled Democratic voters as there are enrolledRepublican voters in New York.^[5] Democratic candidates prevailed in New York in everypresidential election from 1988 to 2024.^[6][7] As of 2025, no Republican candidate had won a statewide election in New York sinceGeorge Pataki was re-elected governor in 2002.^[8] The New York State Senate has been led by the Democratic Party since 2019,^[9][10] while the New York State Assembly has been led by the Democrats since 1975.^[11][12][13]

New York is nearly unique among the states in that it allowselectoral fusion (cross-endorsement).^[14] In a 2020 study, New York was ranked as the 17th easiest state for citizens to vote in.^[15]

Primary elections are elections at which enrolled members of a party nominate party candidates for the general election and elect party officers.^[16][17] New York usesclosed primaries and only an enrolled member of a party can vote in its primaries.^[17] The election district is the basic electoral administrative division, containing a maximum of 950 registered voters (although it may be as large as 1150 registered voters between redistricting) with boundaries determined by the local board of elections.^[18][19]

The person for party nomination for public office who receives a plurality of the vote is nominated as the party candidate.^[17] The state central committee of a political party designates people for statewide public offices in the primary election by majority vote, but people who receive at least 25% of the committee votes may contest the primary, and people who receive less than 25% of the committee votes may contest the primary by collecting 25000 petition signatures with at least 100 signatories from each congressional district.^[20]

The political party county executive committees in cities and towns and the party caucus in villages typically select candidates for local offices, with the local committees ratifying the selections.^[19] In New York City, candidates for the citywide offices are designated jointly by the five county executive committees of each party, and a local political club (which is not an official party organization) may also play a major role in nomination and selection.^[21][19] Judicial nominating conventions, composed of judicial delegates elected from assembly districts within the judicial district, nominateNew York Supreme Court justices.^[22] The designation of a person to contest a party nomination for public office, and the nomination of a person for a party office, at a primary election is bydesignating petition.^[23]

New York is near unique among the states in that it allowselectoral fusion (cross-endorsement), allowing two or more parties to nominate the same person for office.^[14]Absentee ballots are allowed for voters who are away from their residence on election day, ill, or physically disabled.^[24] The minimum age forsuffrage is eighteen years old.^[24] Individuals who have been convicted of afelony aredisenfranchised while incarcerated or on parole; individuals on probation retain the right to vote.^[25] Local boards of elections are required to holdvoter registration between the sixth and fourth Saturday before a general election.^[26] Voter registration at local boards of elections is closed for thirty days before a general election; voter registration at polling places begins thirty days after a general election, and for ten days before and five days after other elections.^[26] Voter registration by mail is allowed.^[24] Voters may choose to enroll in a political party during voter registration.^[26]

Parties that received at least 130,000 votes or 2% of the vote in the previousgubernatorial election orpresidential election qualify for "official" status and automatic statewide ballot access.^[27] This also determines the order on the ballot. There are a number of minor parties in New York State which do not qualify for ballot status.

TheElection Law defines the structure of political parties and requires each party to have county committees and a state committee.^[28][19] The county committees are composed of at least two members elected from each election district, as well as two members elected from each assembly district within the county (district leaders).^[29][19] In the five counties of New York City, the executive committees of the county committees are composed of the district leaders and other officers; outside New York City, the executive committees are composed of the chairmen of the local political committees (of each city, town, and village within the county, composed of county committee members from those localities) and other officers.^[30] In principle, county committee members select the county committee chair, but in New York City the practice is that the district leaders control the choice.^[31] Judicial nominating conventions, which nominateNew York Supreme Court justices, are composed of judicial delegates elected from assembly districts within the judicial district.^[22]

The state committees are in practice composed of members determined by county committee chairmen augmented by representatives of other constituency groups according to party bylaws.^[32][31][33] In principle, a chairperson and executive committee are chosen by the state committee, although in practice a sitting governor of the party will effectively name the chairperson.^[31][33] The state committee chairperson and executive committee select one man and one woman for the national committee, select at-large delegates and chairpersons for the national convention, select candidates for statewide offices, and conduct party activities.^[33]

A 2005 study by the Grassroots Initiative found that in New York City more than 50% of committee membership was vacant and that 98% of committee member elections were uncontested.^[31] In suburban and rural areas, informed observers estimate that at least one-third of committee membership is vacant.^[31] New York's judicial conventions have also been criticized as opaque, brief, and dominated by county party leaders.^[34]

The voting population of theProvince of New York rose from 2,000 in 1698, to 23,000 in 1790.^[35] Thesecret ballot did not exist at the time and all elections were conducted in the county town under the supervision of the sheriff.^[36] Elections inAlbany County were controlled by the Schuyler, Livingston, andVan Rensselaer families.^[35]

Elections for the 1stNew York Provincial Congress were slated to be held on April 28, 1775, but continued into June, which was almost three weeks after the Congress started its session.^[37] The next session's elections were meant to be held on November 7, 1776, but by the opening day of November 14, only 9 of 14 counties had selected their deputies.^[38] A quorum did not exist until the deputies decided to organize the session on December 1, and a quorum was established on December 6.^[39]

The governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, state comptroller and the two U.S. senators are now the only statewide elected officials. The first state election was held in June 1777, and theGovernor andLieutenant Governor were the only statewide elected officials. Besides them, theAssemblymen were elected in the counties, and thestate senators in the senatorial districts.

Until 1821 a state election was held annually, lasting three days, beginning on the last Monday in April. The Assembly was completely and the Senate partly renewed. Every three years, a governor and a lieutenant governor were elected, all other state officials were appointed by theCouncil of Appointments. From 1822 to 1841, the state elections have been held lasting three days, beginning on the first Monday in November. The governor and the lieutenant governor continued to be the only statewide elected officials. Since November 1842, the election has been held on a single day, the date fixed on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November^[41] (the date thus ranging from November 2 to 8). In 1844, fourCanal Commissioners were also elected statewide. In 1846, the governor, lieutenant governor, and two Canal Commissioners were elected. All other statewide officials were elected by joint ballot of the state legislature .

TheConstitution of 1846 made most of the state offices elective by popular ballot. From 1847 on, the governor, lieutenant governor,secretary of state,attorney general,state comptroller,State Treasurer,state engineer, threeCanal Commissioners, threeprison inspectors, four judges and theclerk of theNew York Court of Appeals were elected statewide with different terms in office.

From 1870 on, achief judge and six associate judges of the Court of Appeals were elected, and since then the Clerk of the Court of Appeals has been appointed by the court. In 1876, the offices of Canal Commissioner and Inspector of State Prisons were abolished, and their successors were appointed by the governor. From 1914 on, theU.S. senators from New York were elected statewide too. The offices of the treasurer and the state engineer were abolished in 1926. The office of secretary of state became appointive by the governor in 1927. Since 1938, the legislative term is two years for both state senators and assemblymen, so that state elections are held now only in even-numbered years. Until 1973, judges of the Court of Appeals were occasionally elected in odd-numbered years, and the judges of theNew York Court of Appeals became appointed in 1978.

New York State has voted Democratic in national elections since 1988. However,New York City has been the most important source of political fund-raising in the United States for both major parties. Four of the top five zip codes in the nation for political contributions are in Manhattan. The top zip code, 10021 on theUpper East Side, generated the most money for the 2000 presidential campaigns of both George Bush and Al Gore. Republican presidential candidates have often skipped campaigning in the state, taking it as a loss and focusing on vital swing states.

Many of the state's other urban areas, includingAlbany,Ithaca,Buffalo,Rochester, andSyracuse are also Democratic. Upstate New York, especially in rural areas, is generally moreconservative than the cities and historically tended to vote Republican, although Democrats have made dramatic gains upstate in recent elections, and today the region is much more evenly split. Heavily populated suburban areas such asWestchester County andLong Island have swung from reliably Republican to unreliably Democratic in federal elections over the past 25 years, although local races there are still often tightly contested.

DemocratsAl Smith,Franklin Delano Roosevelt andW. Averell Harriman served as governor, as did RepublicansThomas Dewey andNelson Rockefeller, who was elected four times. Progressive RepublicanTheodore Roosevelt was Governor of New York before being elected vice president in 1900.

New York's delegation to the US House of Representatives is composed mostly of Democrats. Republicans have not held a majority of New York US House seats since 1965. This is due almost entirely to the Democrats' near-total domination of local elections inNew York City, which contains 14 of the state's 26 districts. Historically, Republicans had a chance to win three City districts, however,Staten Island, is currently the only part of the City that regularly elects Republicans.

With the defeats of Republican incumbentsSue Kelly andJohn Sweeney and a Democratic victory in the open seat ofSherwood Boehlert in 2006, New York sent 23 Democrats and six Republicans to the110th Congress. Two years later, Randy Kuhl was unseated byEric Massa in the 29th District, andDan Maffei won the seat of retiringJim Walsh in the Syracuse area. As a result, New York's congressional delegation consisted of 26 Democrats and three Republicans at the start of the111th Congress. The three Republicans were the fewest to have ever represented New York in the House, and only a fourth of the number New York sent to that body only a decade earlier. In November 2009, DemocratBill Owens won a special election for a North Country seat previously held by RepublicanJohn McHugh, who resigned to become Secretary of the Army, bringing the delegation to 27 Democrats and 2 Republicans. In addition to holding every seat in New York City, Democrats held all but one seat onLong Island and every House seat in the Hudson Valley. However, in 2010, the Republicans gained 6 seats, all of which had been picked up by Democrats in 2006 or 2008. Five were in Upstate New York, and one was onStaten Island. They also came within a few hundred votes of unseating 1st district incumbentTim Bishop ofSuffolk County. In 2011, DemocratKathy Hochul won a special election inNew York's 26th congressional district, which means that at every seat, except the Long Island-based 2nd congressional district (which was numbered as the 3rd prior to the 2011 redistricting), has elected a Democratic representative at least once since 2006.^{[citation needed]}

New York lost two congressional districts as a result of the 2010 census, and the 2012 elections resulted in the balance of the delegation being 21 Democrats and 6 Republicans; DemocratsDan Maffei andSean Patrick Maloney respectively unseated Republican incumbentsAnn Marie Buerkle andNan Hayworth in the 24th, centered in Syracuse, and the 18th, in the Hudson Valley, while RepublicanChris Collins defeated Hochul in western New York's 27th. Republicans made gains in 2014, defeating two incumbents and picking up one open seat. After no changes in 2016, Democrats defeated three Republican incumbents in 2018, asMax Rose won the Staten Island district, whileAnthony Brindisi andAntonio Delgado were respectively elected to seats in Central New York and in the Hudson Valley. Notably, the three districts that flipped from Republican to Democratic in 2018 had all been won byDonald Trump two years earlier, however, Democrats then lost two of those seats in 2020. Democrats did suffer significant losses in New York in the 2022 elections, despite ared wave not occurring in much of the rest of the United States. Democrats were reduced to a 15–11 majority in the delegation, were completely shut out of Long Island, and held just four seats outside of New York City proper.^[43]

This recent Democratic dominance may be explained by the exodus of non-Hispanic white voters to other parts of the country, in addition to the large influx of predominately Hispanic minorities to the state.^[44] With few exceptions, upstate New York and Long Island have historically been dominated by a moderate brand of Republicanism. Since the early 1990s, many voters in traditional Republican strongholds such as Long Island, Syracuse, and the Hudson Valley have voted for Democratic candidates at the national level. In addition to New York City, Democrats continue to do well around Rochester, Albany, and Buffalo, as they have done since the 1930s. New York City, for instance, has not been carried by a Republican presidential candidate since1924.

Currently, New York is represented in the U.S. Senate byChuck Schumer of Brooklyn andKirsten Gillibrand ofColumbia County, both Democrats.

Over the last five decades, New York has elected Democratic SenatorsDaniel Patrick Moynihan,Robert F. Kennedy, andHillary Clinton as well as Republican SenatorsJacob K. Javits,Alfonse D'Amato andConservative SenatorJames Buckley. New York politics have recently been dominated by downstate areas such as Westchester County,New York City andLong Island, where a majority of the state's population resides. Before the appointment ofKirsten Gillibrand to the Senate in 2009, the most recent US Senator from upstate wasCharles Goodell, appointed to fill out the remainder of Robert F. Kennedy's term, serving from 1968 to 1971. Goodell was from (Jamestown). Before the election ofKirsten Gillibrand in 2010, the last senator from upstate to be elected wasKenneth Keating of Rochester, in 1958.

Schumer's victory over RepublicanAlfonse D'Amato in 1998 gave the Democrats both of the state's Senate seats for the first time since 1947. In 2004, conservativeMichael Benjamin battled with theNew York Republican State Committee for a chance to run against Schumer, which decided in August 2004 there would be no primary and selected moderate AssemblymanHoward Mills as the Republican candidate.^[45] Benjamin publicly accused New York GOP ChairmanSandy Treadwell and GovernorGeorge Pataki of trying to muscle him out of the Senate race and undermine the democratic process.^[46] Many Republican voters were upset when Benjamin was denied the chance to engage in a primary.^[47] Benjamin also had significant advantages over Mills in both fundraising and organization.^[48] Schumer won the largest victory ever recorded for a candidate running statewide in New York against Mills, carrying all but one of the state's counties.

Many New York Republicans were irked again in 2006 when a similar situation unfolded as the state party decided to nominateWestchester CountyDistrict AttorneyJeanine Pirro over conservative lawyerEd Cox, even though Cox had raised over $1.3 million to Pirro's $400,000.^[45] In 2006, Clinton won the third largest victory ever recorded statewide, carrying all but four counties. In both cases, Schumer and Clinton didn't face serious opposition.

New York's Democratic tilt also continued into 2010, even when Democrats were suffering heavy losses all around the country. Chuck Schumer easily defeated Jay Townsend to win a third term in the U.S. Senate with 66 percent of the vote. With both Senate seats up in New York, the media was more focused on the Class I seat because when Kirsten Gillibrand was first appointed in 2009, she initially looked very vulnerable due to her A+ rating from the NRA from when she was representing a rural upstate district. That rating was not well received by downstate residents when she was first appointed to the Senate.^[49] Then Gillibrand immediately changed her position on the issue of gun control after she was appointed to satisfy the concerns from downstate residents. She then went on to win the special election easily with 62 percent of the vote in 2010. In 2012, Gillibrand was re-elected in a landslide with more than 72% of the vote, the highest statewide vote share ever received by a senatorial candidate in New York State.^[50]

Throughout most of the 20th century, New York was a powerfulswing state, forcing presidential candidates to invest a large amount of money and time campaigning there. New York State gave small margins of victory to DemocratsJohn F. Kennedy in1960,Hubert Humphrey in1968,Jimmy Carter in1976 andMichael Dukakis in1988, as well as RepublicansHerbert Hoover in1928,Thomas Dewey in1948 andRonald Reagan in1980. Until the1970 United States census, it had the most votes in theU.S. Electoral College.

Today, although New York is still the fourth largest prize in the Electoral College with 28 votes, it is usually considered an uncontested "blue state"—meaning that it is presumed safe for the Democrats. The last time a Republican made a serious effort in the state wasGeorge H. W. Bush in 1988. Since 1992, the national Republican Party has effectively ceded New York to the Democrats.John Kerry won New York State by 18 percentage points in2004, whileAl Gore won by an even greater 25-point margin in New York State in2000, giving Gore his second-highest total in the nation.Bill Clinton twice scored his third-best performance in New York in1992 and1996. In the2008 presidential electionBarack Obama carried New York with 62.9% of the vote, making it the third most Democratic state in that election, surpassed only by Hawaii and Vermont, as well as the District of Columbia. In2012, Obama carried New York by an even greater margin, taking 63.4% of the vote to RepublicanMitt Romney's 35.2%, again making it the third most Democratic state in the nation.^[52]

Even in the days when New York was considered a swing state, it had a slight Democratic lean. It has only supported a Republican for president six times since theGreat Depression—in1948,1952,1956,1972,1980 and1984. Republicans have to do reasonably well in Buffalo, Syracuse and Rochester while holding down their deficits in New York City to have a realistic chance of carrying the state. New York has not voted Republican sinceRonald Reagan in the 1984 election (54% - 46%).

• 2024 New York state elections

• New York gubernatorial elections
• New York Attorney General elections
• New York Comptroller elections
• United States senators from New York

• New York City mayoral elections

• Political party strength in New York
• Politics of New York
• Electoral reform in New York
• Voting technology in New York State

• Zimmerman, Joseph F. (2008).The Government and Politics of New York State (2nd ed.).SUNY Press.ISBN 978-0-7914-7435-8.
• Becker, Carl (1960).The History of Political Parties in the Province of New York 1760-1776.University of Wisconsin Press.ISBN 0553014161.{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)

• Paterson, David"Black, Blind, & In Charge: A Story of Visionary Leadership and Overcoming Adversity." Skyhorse Publishing. New York, New York, 2020

• New York State Board of Elections
• New York atBallotpedia
• Election statistics from the Office of theClerk of the United States House of Representatives
• "State Elections Legislation Database",Ncsl.org, Washington, D.C.:National Conference of State Legislatures,State legislation related to the administration of elections introduced in 2011 through this year, 2020

• New York (state) elections
• Government of New York (state)

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