The largest Orthodox democratic vote, by far, may be generated from Williamsburg. 8,967 Orthodox Jews voted in the democratic primaries in the last four years, over sixty percent more than Borough Park's Orthodox vote, although the latter's Orthodox population is 66 percent larger.
Borough Park, the largest Orthodox neighborhood by far, actually falls to number 3 when counted by its Jewish democratic votes. The BP Orthodox community produced 5,555 democratic voters, versus 5,864 Orthodox democratic votes that came out from Fltabush, Midwood & Kingston, although the are only has about 61 percent Orthodox residents - 64,438 - of the 105,520 Orthodox living in Borough Park.
Williamsburg is close behind Flatbush's Orthodox population, with a community of 63,222, but produced over fifty percent more Orthodox democratic primary votes: 8,967 (and explained earlier the number is probably 15-20 percent higher). Furthermore, the largest Williamsburg voting bloc, the UJO aligned communities legendary with its delivering around two thirds of the total vote for their candidates, delivered more votes to any other neighborhood. Indeed an unparalleled voting power. One will be hard-pressed to find any other one endorsement to deliver one percent of the city's primary votes and 20 percent of the Orthodox votes, like the one found in Williamsburg.
The above 3 Orthodox neighborhoods - Williamsburg, Flatbush and Borough Park, are producing the bulk of the Jewish votes. As a matter of a fact, only 2 other Orthodox neighborhood clusters produced more than 1,000 democratic primary votes, as per our analysis: The upper West Side, 1,564; and Kew Gardens Hills, Jamaica and Fresh Meadows, 1,235. Okay, Kings Bay / Madison almost hit that mark, with 999 Orthodox votes. (Again, we use the neighborhoods as grouped together by the UJA study).
When looking at the per capita rate, Williamsburg produced 14.18% democratic votes per Orthodox resident; the Flatbush area had 9.10%, and Borough Park only 5.26%. Lower Manhattan East had the highest per capita vote, of almost twenty percent (19.91%), but its total vote was only 451. Generally, Queens had the highest Orthodox per capita democratic primary vote, when looking on the borough as a whole.
We should note that this analysis only includes democratic primary voters. It is possible that the turnout in some neighborhoods is higher in general elections, due to a larger number of registered voters in parties other than the democratic. Also, in some areas, voters interests may align more closely with the general electorate, which turns out in higher numbers in elections for higher offices, versus some Orthodox areas where turnout tend to increase in lower-rank races where the local vote is more likely to make a difference.
More importantly, Williamsburg had several hotly contested primaries during the years covered by this analysis (Levin in 2009; Restler in 2010, Velasquez and Olechowski in 2012). Although parts of Borough Park also had some locally heated primaries (Lander, 2009; Mostofsky, 2012), it only covered a smaller part of the area, or involved a judgeship, hardly a position to drive up turnout, even when it turns into an internal proxy squabble. Larger areas of Flatbush and surrounding areas where in districts of contested primaries (Jacobs, Cymbrowitz, Jeffries vs, Barron, and Mostofsky). This may explain part of Borough Park's lower primary turnout.
Still, Borough Park had two very hotly contested special elections (Greenfield and Storobin) and a conested regular election (Felder). Parts of Flabush also voted in the Storobin race, also, the Turner race included parts of the Orthodox Flatbush. These races probably tested the turnout of these neighborhoods to their maximum.
Result: When counting the Orthodox democrats who participated in an election during 2009-2012, it adds up to 7,596 for Borough Park and 7,903 for Flatbush, and parts of them are probably November-only voters. Even by assuming generously that all of them are possible primary pick-up, Borough Park still lags the Orthodox Williamsburgh - only three fifths of its size - by almost 1,400 voters; and Flatbush is trailing it by over thousand votes.
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I embed the analysis again, to make it easier to the explanation and study on one page. Should you want it in an excel sheet, click here.
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