SYRACUSE, N.Y. (NCC News) – The town of Onondaga has flipped its party majority after the latest tally of registered voters following the Feb. 14th deadline for voter eligibility in the upcoming New York state primary.
Onondaga now joins several other towns in the county including DeWitt and Manlius with a Democratic majority among their population.
According to Syracuse.com, there are 5,155 registered Democrats in Onondaga, ahead of 5,090 registered Republicans and 4,216 independents.
Onondaga County Democratic Commissioner, Dustin Czarny said that the town flipping is following along with trends that he and his team had been tracking for some time.
“Over the last 10,11,12 years there’s been a slow, steady increase of Democrats outside the city of Syracuse where before they were dominant inside the city,” said Czarny.
Several factors that may have led to this shift in political majority could be a rise in voter registration due to the ease of registration. The shift to online registration through the DMV has allowed potential voters to register much quicker than before.
The majority change is not the only trend being seen in the town of Onondaga, in Onondaga county and in the United States. Overall voter registration is growing in 2020 leading up to the presidential election.
Czarny said that they have seen a tremendous growth in the county’s voters this registration season.
“We are up to almost 300,000 voters; we’ll probably be over that come election time. That will be a 25 thousand voter surge since 2016,” said Czarny.
With more voters being registered for the upcoming primaries and eventual presidential election, Czarny hopes that more Americans will keep registering and voting every year.
