One of our crawlers takes in both “Unofficial” and then “Certified” election returns in NY starting right as polls close. In addition to the vote counts themselves, this dataset includes some interesting features such as how many ballots were counted by the “Public Counter”–viz. at the poll-site–or via an alternative process, such as the “Absentee / Military” mail-in balloting. In 2020, an unusual number of voters availed themselves of mail-in voting due to the pandemic.
As you stare into this map, a certain demographic reality emerges, if you know the lore in NYC.
In case you need to see the quiet part, here it is again, with an added legend:
We are seeing a pretty interesting window into civic education here, and attitudes towards voting other than in person. This is not an area of my expertise remotely, and I know that correlation is not causation, but now that we have the data, I do know that whiteness is correlated with adapting to mail-in voting in NYC, as of June 2020.
Pew found the same thing with one of their polls which they ran one month after New York’s June primary.
Likely, considerable sociological work will go into explaining the racial preferences among Biden supporters (Democrats) for adapting to mail-in voting or not. Pew found that among Trump supporters (Republicans), that there was an ideological preference instead of a racial one:
We have post-COVID ballot data on the June and November elections in New York and we believe that knowledge of how voters are voting now can help you connect with them.