More than twice as many Democrats as Republicans voted early by mail in the race to represent the 3rd Congressional District in the U.S. House, a Gothamist analysis of the voter data for the special election found. And about a third more Democrats than Republicans opted for in-person early voting ahead of Election Day.
The high early voting turnout was a key factor in Democrat Tom Suozzi’s victory in the 3rd Congressional District last month. Suozzi, who previously served in Congress, defeated Republican nominee Mazi Pilip by eight points, making the turnout ahead of that snowy Election Day a critical buffer that helped secure his victory.
New York state has seven competitive congressional races that could ultimately decide which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives, and Republicans in New York are acknowledging that they have an early voting problem that needs to be fixed ahead of November’s elections.
“We had President Trump basically in 2020 telling us not to do early voting, certainly downplaying it, and I think too many Republicans are still caught on that,” said Peter King, a former Republican congressmember from Long Island for three decades.
King, who stepped down from his seat in 2021, said he never experienced a race where early voting and voting by mail played as crucial a role in the election as what he observed in the “Mazi Suozzi race.”
In-person early voting took effect in New York in 2019, which gives voters nine days to vote before Election Day. The special election in the 3rd Congressional District was the first congressional election to also use the state’s new early vote-by-mail law, which meant nearly 1,000 votes had been cast a full month before the election.
While King says he’s personally not a fan of early voting, likening it to picking the most valuable player in June, long before the baseball season ends, he also stressed, “you got to play the game by the rules that are there, and the rules are now that early…
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