Here are some preliminary numbers on the results from the Cuomo/Teachout showdown:
The Five Boroughs
Brooklyn: Cuomo 67% Teachout 30%
Manhattan: Cuomo 55% Teachout 43%
Queens: Cuomo 74% Teachout 22%
Staten Island: Cuomo 66% Teachout 30%
The Bronx: Cuomo 81% Teachout 14%
Meanwhile, Teachout won big in many Upstate counties. This is telling for a couple of reasons. Common wisdom is that the Big City is much more liberal than Upstate, but that doesn’t seem to hold for the Democratic primary voter. That’s curious until you look at the how the boroughs voted and you realize that Cuomo did much better in The Bronx (37% black) and Brooklyn (34% black) than he did in Manhattan (16% black). Manhattan is also the home of a lot of Wall Street workers who actually like Cuomo’s brand of centrism. That Cuomo got 81% of the vote in the Bronx (28% white) and only 66% of the vote in Staten Island (11% black) is the giveaway. White progressives who backed the Teachout/Wu ticket did not make any inroads with the black community.
It’s not obvious why Cuomo is so popular in the black (and I have to add, Latino) community, but he clearly is. And that demonstrates a certain lack of communication between the white and non-white progressive coalitions.
It’s something that needs to be fixed. Progressive candidates need messages and platforms that reach and resonate with progressive citizens. If they can’t even accomplish that, then there’s really no hope for progressivism in this country.
