A Tale of Two Communities: Mayoral Results in WIlliamsburg and Borough Park

"On Tuedsay, of all the Orthodox neighborhoods, Mr. de Blasio had the best showing by far in Williamsburg's Hasidic areas, as clearly shown on the election results map," I wrote in a prior post. I  based it on the colored election result maps showing Borough Park and other Jewish areas with a number of red districts, while Williamsburg was all blue, and the preliminary review of the maps' numbers showed Mr. deBlasio winning strongly in the area. Still, I didn't know at the time how wide of a gap it was between the Mayor-Elect's showing in these two Hasidic areas. After weeks of begging, a friend obtained for me the Board of Elections unofficial results broken down by EDs. And it shows that the gap is much larger than what I have imagined.

A quick review of the numbers in the Orthodox election districts in these two areas show a tale of two Orthodox Communities:

In Williamsburg Mr. de Blasio received over 74 percent of the casted mayoral votes in Jewish EDs, and over 72 % in the almost-exclusively Jewish EDs, versus over 23 and 25 % for Mr. Lhota respectively. In other words, Mr. deBlasio's Williamsburg showing is identical (or even a bit better) of his showing citywide.

In Borough Park's 48th Assembly district, though, the results are completely different. Mr. Lhota got over 55% of the votes in the Orthodox EDs, versus under 40%  for Mr. deBlasio. Lhota's results there where 2.5 times his results citywide. Bill deBlasio could have had the support of all communities and activists in Borough Park, he may even have represented pockets of that area, yet a majority of the voters still pulled the levers according to their own instincts.

(The Williamsburg EDs were identified through the voters' lists, while Borough Parks are based on a number cruncher who is closely allied with Councilman David Greenfield who identified to me these EDs as Orthodox after the primaries. The heaviest Hasidic EDs in Williamsburg are based on a metric I used after the primary. Also some of the EDs were moved to different polling locations than in the primaries, but their boundaries haven't changed. Here, they are still listed with the primary locations. I didn't update them, given that this is irrelevant to the current topic).

This is especially revealing, given that deBlasio won these same Borough Park EDs in the democratic primaries, getting about 1/3rd of the votes versus a quarter who went to Bill Thompson, while he was beaten in Williamsburg 2 to 1 by Bill Thompson. But to anyone who is acquainted with the political scene in these two neighborhoods, the explanation is obvious. The legendary dominating bloc-vote in Williamsburg - dominated by the Zalanites but it includes most other communities, and is led by Rabbi David Niederman - endorsed Mr. Thompson in the primary, while in the general elections it endorsed Mr. de Blasio.

In Borough Park, on the other hand, endorsements doesn't matter as much. In elections that draws general attention, they will rather vote according to their political leanings - which are overwhelmingly conservative - than what the Shul  poster instructs them to do. Even in local elections, a strong tendency to vote independently of what the leaders say was recently evident.

BTW, the primary night results in BP is interesting for Mr. Thhompson's relatively strong showing. He received 1,763 votes in the Orthodox EDs, versus 2,223 for the front-runner Mr. deBalsio. While Mr. Thompson enjoyed the backing of Assemblyman Hikind, a number of elections in recent years demonstrated that the Assemblyman doesn't have a GOTV machine or much of influence on the majority of the voters. On the other hand, de Balsio received the most communal organized support in the area. He was endorsed early on by Bobov, Belz, and in the 11th hour by the Satmar Aranites - the three group who are perceived to be the most politically organized.

Meanwhile, Mr. Thompson enjoyed the support of the still developing communities Bobov-45, and the Satmar-Zalanites joined their parent-community in Williamsburg to side with Thompson. I have yet to hear from any other large community supporting Thompson. (In Flatbush-Midwood, he enjoyed the warm support of powerhouse Chaskel Bennet and he carried the Jewish areas there, but Bennet's turf is mainly Flatbush). His strong showing is in no small part the credit of the Satmar-Zalanites and Bobov-45, showing that they are increasingly establishing themselves major political forces in the area.

This demonstrates again that the strongest unified bloc vote is to be found in the Hasidic Williamsburg, where the leaders of the community - , sways the community's votes like no where else, and when he joined the de Blasio camp, the community instantly lined up to follow him.

The results prove another another lesson concerning turnout that is reinforced all too often. When the Aranites decide to compete at the voting boots by endorsing a different candidates, it drives up the turnout in Williamsburg like nothing else. In the primaries, the number of only democratic voters in the Jewish EDs were close to 8,700, versus only 55 percent of all registered in the general elections - 4,850.

In case you are interested: Eric Salgado received 219 votes in Borough Park's AD 48's Orthodox EDs, under 2 %, and in Williamsburg he had 60 votes, over 1 percent. Jack Hidary out-polled Salgado in the whole AD48, pulling 324 votes on 2 party lines, versus Salgado's 241.

The BoE unofficial results for AD 48 & 50

2013 Mayor results AD 48 & 50

Charts of the results in the Orthodox EDs in Borough Park and Williamsburg

Charts Mayor 48 & 50

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