Greenburgh Primary: a June surprise as Edgemont threatens to sit this one out

As of the Monday morning, 1,546 Greenburgh Democrats voted early and 501 voted by absentee ballot.  In sum, 2,047 have voted so far in the June primary, although, as absentee ballots can be postmarked as late as primary day, a few more (though likely not many) will add to that number.    

The absentee/early votes (so far) can be broken down as follows:

[NOTE: I define TOV areas as the following Election District groupings:

         Fairview: 42, 44-46, 61, 63, 64, 78.

         Hartsdale: 36-41, 56, 57, 66, 71, 72, 75

         Edgemont: 33-35, 49, 69, 70

         Ardsley SD TOV: 32, 43, 50, 62, 73

         Elmsford SD TOV:  51, 77, 81

         Pocantico Hills SD: 29, 68; Valhalla SD: 47, 48, 67

         East Irvington: 30;  East Tarrytown 31

Yes, these are inexact groupings, but I think they work well to generalize communities which tend to vote similarly, without getting even more micro.]  

For context, the last column on the right shows the % of vote that each grouping comprised in the 2013 Greenburgh Supervisor primary when Bob Bernstein challenged Paul Feiner.   There was no early voting in 2013, and absentees were by excuse-only, making it impossible to compare the 2021 early/abs with the 2013 totals.  In addition, early and absentee voters may not reliably predict turnout in a given community because early and absentee voters are much older than average.   The median age of the early voters is 67 and the median age of absentee voters (so far) is a rather formidable 78 (!) [Fun fact:  our oldest absentee voter is 105].  The median voter age in Greenburgh's 2019 town board primary was 62.    66% of absentee voters are female (I don't have the early voting gender breakdown) which is higher than the 61% of female Greenburgh Democratic primary voters in 2019. 

Nonetheless, I think the early/absentee numbers can give some sense of voter enthusiasm in the campaign, and the big story here is that Edgemont threatens to go AWOL in this primary.  Edgemont early/abs voters  comprises just 5% of the early/abs votes received, far less than the nearly 9% of the townwide population that lives in the Edgemont school district.  When Edgemont is motivated it can turnout - see the example of 2013 primary where Edgemont far out played its voting weight at 14% of the townwide vote.   

The drop in Edgemont voters, however, may be more than offset  by the interest Fairview voters are taking in this campaign.  

The huge Dobbs Ferry turnout so far may reflect nothing more than that one of the two townwide early polling places was Dobbs Ferry townhall.  

   

For these purposes, I defined Hartsdale as