Do New Yorkers’ Votes Matter?

By Neil A. Carousso

This year’s heavily covered and widely discussed presidential election season has mobilized new and millennial voters to the polls, but in large states like New York, do votes matter?

“We’re not relevant on the national stage,” said Jim Coll, who is the founder of ChangeNYS.org, a non-profit organization with the mission to promote civic education and political reform in New York. “New York will kind of fall off the map in terms of getting attention from these politicians running for president.”

Both front-runners won the New York Primary. Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, won in the Empire State with 58 percent of the vote. Bernie Sanders, who was born in Brooklyn, received 42 percent of the vote and 106 regular delegates. Although Clinton only received 33 more delegates than Sanders she earned 290,614 more votes than the self-proclaimed Democratic socialist.

New York businessman Donald Trump won his home state with a whopping 60.4 percent of the vote, picking up 89 delegates. Trump is now 393 delegates shy of clinching the Republican nomination before July’s GOP Convention in Cleveland. There are 172 Republican delegates up for grabs on what some are referring to as “Super Tuesday III.” Pennsylvania, a winner-take-most state, carries 71 GOP delegates, the most of five states with primaries on April 26.

Ohio Governor John Kasich collected 4 delegates, earning 25 percent of the vote. Texas Senator Ted Cruz, after insulting New Yorkers 3 months ago with a comment about “New York values” in a Fox Business GOP debate, received 14.5 percent of the Big Apple vote.

“We are the ones who are going to have to live with this decision,” said a college-aged female voter who voted for the first time. “I don’t want to complain about the results afterwards when I wasn’t apart of it.”