Low Turnout for Early Voting in Westchester: Look to Yonkers If It’s Close

The totals are in for early voting in Westchester County and while 25,000 people came out and cast their vote for the upcoming democratic primaries for Congress in NY-16-(Bowman vs Latimer), and for District Attorney, (Cacace vs. Wagstaff), democratic leaders tell us that the early vote totals “are not out of this world.”

Most democrats we spoke to say that the Bowman -Latimer primary tomorrow-June 25-will be closer than two polls that had Latimer up by 17 points. One respected democratic leader said, “in my gut it will be closer than the polls, maybe 54%-46% for Latimer.

City and State Magazine recently analyzed some of the past vote totals for the Bowman-Latimer race. In 2022, Bowman got 54.4% of the vote, beating County Legislators Vedat Gashi and Catherine Parker. Bowman did well in Westchester’s cities, (Yonkers, Mt. Vernon, and New Rochelle) in 2022 with 58%, and in Yonkers, Bowman got 61% of the vote.

But less than 7,200 democrats voted in Yonkers for the primary in 2022. There are more than 65,000 democrats in Yonkers that can vote in the Bowman-Latimer primary.

“If you give Bowman the Bronx, and you give Latimer the rest of Westchester except for the cities, that leaves Mount Vernon, Yonkers and New Rochelle. If this race is closer than most think, then Yonkers democrats may certainly decide the primary,” said one Yonkers democrat.

Other data shows that in other Westchester communities, early voting results were at 15% of all democrats in New Rochele, and 17% of democrats in Greenburgh. In the Bronx, only 2,000 early votes were cast.