Daily Kos Elections' project to calculate the 2016 presidential results for every state legislative seat in the nation hits New York, a heavily Democratic state, but one where a coalition of Republicans and rogue Democrats run the state Senate. You can find our master list of states here, which we'll be updating as we add new states; you can also find all our data from 2016 and past cycles here.
Hillary Clinton carried New York 59 percent to 37 percent, a drop from Obama's 63-35 win in 2012 but a strong margin nonetheless. Clinton also won 40 of New York's 63 state Senate districts, trading 16 Obama seats for only one Romney district, but still taking a clear majority of the chamber. Democrats, meanwhile, did win a nominal 32-31 majority in the Senate last November.
But when the legislative session convened, the Senate’s leader was still the same man who was in charge last year, Republican John Flanagan. That's because eight Democrats belong to a renegade group known as the Independent Democratic Conference, which has voted to keep the Republicans in power since the 2012 elections, while a ninth Democrat, Simcha Felder, outright caucuses with the GOP. As a result, the GOP-IDC-Felder alliance holds a huge 40 to 23 majority, with one heavily Democratic seat, SD-30, vacant (we assign any vacant seat to the party that last held it). The entire Senate is up for election every two years.
While members of the IDC love to claim that they're true progressives (one member recently had the chutzpah to hand out fliers to angry constituents suggesting that the initials "IDC” actually stood for "Immigrant Defense Coalition"), the coalition has helped the GOP block progressive policies like a state-level DREAM Act, which would provide tuition assistance to undocumented immigrant students.
The arrangement has worked quite well for the IDC members, who enjoy committee chairmanships and vice-chairmanships (and salary bumps that come along with them), as well as larger staffs. In 2014, progressives and unhappy members of the Queens Democratic machine made an effort to unseat two New York City-based IDC members, junta leader Jeff Klein and rank-and-filer Tony Avella, in the Democratic primary, but both challenges fell short.
However, while Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio talked about how they'd love to have a Democratic Senate, Cuomo has always made little secret that he's more comfortable with the GOP in charge of the upper chamber, while de Blasio—a supposed progressive exponent—actually endorsed both Klein and Avella. Klein won renomination 67-33, while Avella narrowly hung on. Since then, the IDC has picked up three more members in heavily Democratic New York City seats.
We'll start with a look at the districts of those nine renegade Democrats.
Simcha Felder, who is not a member of the IDC, does sit in a Brooklyn-based seat that has backed Republicans in presidential races. His SD-17 went for Trump 53-45, which was actually a bit of a swing to the left from Romney's 58-41 win, but it’s still pretty red. Felder represents a constituency with a very large Orthodox Jewish population—his district has been nicknamed the "super-Jewish district"—and Democrats maintain a strong advantage in voter registration there. (This also relates to why Felder doesn’t just switch parties: His constituents remain Democrats in order to influence primaries in New York City. Keeping the Democratic ballot line thus helps Felder stay in office.)
The seat narrowly elected a Republican in a 2012 special election, but Felder unseated him by a massive 66-33 margin just a few months later. Felder quickly joined the GOP caucus, and he faced no major party opposition whatsoever in 2014 and 2016; Felder even ran last year as both the Democratic and Republican nominee. Many of Felder's constituents send their children to yeshivas (Jewish religious schools), and Felder justifies his alliance with the GOP largely because he argues that they will give yeshivas more state funding. Felder still nominally identifies as a Democrat, though, and he even outright said last November that he'd caucus with the side that offered him the "best deal."
However, the eight members of the IDC all represent seats that backed Clinton by double digits. The reddest IDC-held district is David Carlucci's Rockland County-dominated SD-38 north of New York City, which still voted for Clinton 54-43, a small increase from Obama's 54-45 win. David Valesky's Syracuse-area SD-53 in Upstate New York backed Clinton by a comparable 54-40 margin, a drop from Obama's 62-36 win.
But after that, the IDC-held seats get really blue really fast. Trump's next-best seat is SD-23, which includes part of Brooklyn and the bluer areas of Staten Island. This district, which is held by IDC founding member Diane Savino (who is also Klein’s girlfriend), backed Clinton 61-36. IDC ringleader Klein's Bronx-based SD-34 supported Clinton 74-24, and she even exceeded 90 percent of the vote in two IDC-held seats, SD-31 and SD-20. We'll have a whole lot more to say about the IDC—and the possibility that mainstream Democrats could defeat some of them in 2018 primaries, in a future post. But it’s worth noting that the fact that so many of these IDC-held seats are so blue means that they’re likely full of primary voters who are furious with Trump and won’t appreciate being represented by people who are allied with The Donald’s party.
However, even if Felder and all the IDC members returned to the fold or were replaced by mainstream Democrats, Team Red would still have a strong chance to keep the chamber. As we noted earlier, Republicans hold 31 of the Senate’s 63 districts, and nine Republicans represent Clinton seats. While New York has favored Democrats at all levels for decades, the Republicans have run the Senate for generations. The one time the Democratic caucus were in charge of the Senate in recent memory came in 2009 and 2010, but that period was marred by dysfunction and ultimately defined by a June 2009 coup, where two Democrats crossed party lines and gave the GOP a brief 32-30 majority. The two wayward members eventually returned to the fold, but the GOP retook the chamber in the 2010 wave.
To protect their restored majority, Team Red, with a sign-off from Cuomo and the Democratic-led state Assembly, passed a gerrymander that also added a 63rd seat to the chamber. Republicans surprisingly lost the majority in 2012, but Felder and a few Democrats from the IDC, which had been formed the year before, voted to keep them in power, and they've been by the GOP's side ever since.
One way to illustrate how effective the GOP was in drawing the lines is to sort each seat in each chamber by Trump's margin of victory over Clinton and see how the seat in the middle—known as the median seat—voted. While Clinton won the state 59-37, the median seat backed her by a considerably smaller 54-43 margin, an 11-point advantage for the GOP.
In most states, that wouldn't be a huge obstacle for Democrats: For instance, only four congressional Republicans represent U.S. House seats that backed Clinton by double-digit margins. However, even without the IDC aiding them, New York’s legislative Republicans benefit from ticket splitting. Of the nine Republicans from Clinton districts, three of them represent seats more Democratic than the median seat.
Frustratingly, Democrats didn't even challenge the incumbent who represents the bluest GOP-held seat. Last fall, even as the Rochester-area SD-55 voted 56-38 Clinton (after going 57-41 for Obama), Republican Rich Funke won a second term with no opposition. Democrats did challenge Republican Joseph Robach in the nearby SD-56; however, Robach won his eighth term 63-37, even though his seat went from 60-38 Obama to a still sizable 54-41 Clinton win. And in Long Island's open SD-07, Republican Elaine Phillips won her first term 51-49 even though her seat swung leftward, going from 54-45 Obama to 55-42 Clinton.
One of the silver linings for Senate Democrats last year was that they did make other gains on Long Island. The GOP began 2016 holding every Senate seat located in Nassau and Suffolk Counties, but in the spring, Democrat Todd Kaminsky pulled off a very narrow win in the special election to succeed convicted GOP Senate leader Dean Skelos. Kaminsky won the general election by a stronger 52-47 margin as his SD-09 went from 54-46 Obama to 53-44 Clinton.
In November, a Democrat also picked up the neighboring SD-08, with John Brooks unseating Republican Michael Venditto by just 50.1-49.9. This seat went from 56-43 Obama to a narrow 50-47 Clinton win, but the incumbent was hurt after his father, Oyster Bay Town Supervisor John Venditto, was indicted for corruption less than a month before Election Day. The one Senate seat that went from Romney to Clinton is also located on Long Island. SD-05 flipped from 50-49 Romney to 50-47 Clinton, but longtime GOP incumbent Carl Marcellino fended off a challenge from Democrat James Gaughran 50.6-49.4.
Oh yeah, New York has a state Assembly too! Republicans lost the speaker's chair in 1974, and they're unlikely to regain it anytime soon, as Democrats hold a 108-42 majority. Long Island Assemblyman Fred Thiele identifies as an independent but caucuses with Democrats and has won repeatedly on the Democratic ballot line; for our purposes, we count him as a Democrat.
The Assembly is almost the complete inverse of the Senate. Ticket-splitting benefits Democrats here: Clinton won 99 of the Assembly’s 150 seats, and 12 Democrats represent Trump districts while only four Republicans hold Clinton turf. The reddest Democratic-held seat is actually Trump's second-best Assembly district in the state. Democrat Dov Hikind hails from a Brooklyn seat that backed Trump 69-28, a small shift from Romney's 76-24 margin. But Hikind, whose seat overlaps with Simcha Felder's Senate district, is one of the most conservative Democrats in the chamber, and he has a knack for making news for all the wrong reasons.
The Republican in the bluest Clinton seat is Raymond Walter, whose Buffalo-area AD-146 went from 51-48 Obama to Clinton 52-44. Democrats also got to draw the lines in the Assembly to lock in their strong majority. Clinton carried the median seat 59-37, comparable to her statewide performance.