Hochul & Zeldin's Best NYC Blocks: A Neighborhood Breakdown

NEW YORK CITY — If you were a voter in Midwood, Brooklyn, you may have been shocked to find out that Democrat Kathy Hochul won this week's election for governor.

That's because Republican challenger Lee Zeldin dominated the neighborhood, even winning 100 percent of the vote in one small electoral precinct, according to a Patch analysis of the preliminary results from Tuesday's general election.

The incumbent Hochul won about 70 percent of New York City's votes to Zeldin's 30 percent, helping her secure a roughly six-point statewide win — a wider margin than some polls had predicted, but still an uncomfortably narrow gap for a Democrat in deep-blue New York.

And zooming into certain neighborhoods gives a much more nuanced picture of each candidate's support. Here are a few takeaways from the unofficial voting tallies.

Hochul's best blocks

A handful of small election districts voted unanimously for Kathy Hochul. That included a precinct in Far Rockaway, Queens, home to a couple of high-rise apartment towers, where Hochul won 100 percent of the 58 votes counted so far.

In areas with a more substantial number of votes cast, Hochul's best result happened in a four-block, brownstone-lined district in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. Hochul won 99 percent of the 542 votes cast in that district bounded by Lafayette Avenue, Greene Avenue, St. James Place and Classon Avenue, with Zeldin getting just seven votes.

The governor had an equally strong showing in a collection of residential blocks in South Jamaica, Queens, getting 98 percent of votes in a precinct wedged between Guy Brewer Boulevard and the Long Island Rail Road train tracks.

In Manhattan, Hochul's best performance happened in Harlem, in a district spanning from West 145th to 149th streets along the Harlem River. Hochul won 97 percent of the 484 votes cast in that precinct, which includes part of the Esplanade Gardens apartment complex.

Zeldin's best blocks

As for Zeldin, the conservative Republican also won every single vote in a few small precincts. That included a tiny, one-block district along East 16th Street in the Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Midwood, where Zeldin won all 41 votes counted so far.

Zeldin's best showing in a more sizable district occurred about two miles west, in the Hasidic neighborhood of Borough Park, where Zeldin won 97 percent of the 846 votes cast in eight blocks between 15th and 17th avenues.

Zeldin won support from Orthodox Jewish leaders for promising not to tightly regulate yeshivas, even after a New York Times investigation found widespread academic underperformance and even violence at the religious schools.

Outside of Orthodox enclaves, Zeldin's strongest district was at the southernmost tip of Staten Island, in the Tottenville neighborhood, where the Republican won 88 percent of votes in the two dozen blocks at the very end of the island.

Overall, Hochul's relative dominance in New York City was critical to her victory: her margin over Zeldin in the city was more than 666,000 votes, according to preliminary tallies — more than double her statewide gap of roughly 304,000.

If current trends hold, Hochul would be on track to win New York City by a narrower margin than Andrew Cuomo did during his final re-election campaign. In 2018, Cuomo won 84 percent of the vote in the five boroughs, nearly 14 percentage points higher than Hochul's showing.

The results reported so far remain unofficial, not including some mail-in and affidavit ballots.

Voting data is via the New York City Board of Elections, compiled by the Center for Urban Research at the CUNY Graduate Center.