Working Families Party

Since the WFP endorsement of Stephen Harrison I have started crunching some numbers of the WFP influence. Eventually I hope to tie this all together with a GOTV assesment for NY13. Going back to a previous post on minimum wage and poverty in Staten Island, I think a stronger coordination between WFP and the Democratic GOTV in the district can really lead to substantial gains from the State Assembly level and up. If you are unfamiliar with the concept of fusion voting you can read up on it here.

In 2004 John Kerry garnered 66,255 votes in Richmond County (Staten Island) on the Democratic line and 2,193 votes on the WFP line. His WFP numbers accounted for 3.2% of his vote in Staten Island.

To put that in perspective here is the breakdown of WFP percentage of the vote total per borough that went to Kerry:

4.0% Kings County (Brooklyn)
3.2% Richmond County (Staten Island)
3.1% Manhattan
2.6% Queens
2.5% Bronx

Within Staten Island, Kerry's percentage of the vote coming from the WFP line was;

60th AD: 3.6%
61st AD: 3.6%
62nd AD: 3.2%
63rd AD: 2.8%

Next take a look at Frank Barbaro's WFP numbers, breakdown by Assembly District (AD);

60th AD: 5.2% (+1.8%)
61st AD: 5.2% (+1.6%)
62nd AD: 5.3% (+2.1%)
63rd AD: 4.5% (+1.7%)

Barbaro's WFP numbers clearly outpaced Kerry's in each AD. The question of leveraging this connection voters have with WFP and/or the strength of their GOTV efforts will play a large part in flipping this seat. Further analysis after some more playing with the calculator.