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Early voting begins soon in Connecticut's primary elections, which seemed like a good opportunity to raise an underappreciated point about the electorate: it isn't as blue as we usually think.
This is not to say that Connecticut doesn't consistently vote for Democratic politicians. It does. It is, instead, to draw a distinction that has become particularly acute - and at times problematic - for the political left. While a lot of people in Connecticut vote for Democrats, a plurality of registered voters aren't Democrats, much less Republicans. And that's true across the country, not just here.
Let's start by recognizing that the state's pool of registered voters doesn't overlap as cleanly with population as you might expect. If we overlay both the population and the voter pool on top of a map of Connecticut, oriented evenly around points of latitude and longitude, we see that some places that have a higher percentage of residents have relatively fewer voters, and vice versa.
On the map above, most circles overlap cleanly: about the same percentage of residents in that area as percentage of voters. But in some places the blue circles are bigger than the red ones; those areas make up a larger portion of the electorate than population.
There are some clear reasons for this divergence. One is that voter registration (and voting propensity) tends to increase with age and income. There are structural reasons for this: wealthier and older people, for example, are more likely to own homes and therefore not have to re-register to vote frequently. They are also more likely to be registered Republicans than less wealthy people, which is reflected in Connecticut's voter registration patterns.
Please do note my use of the word "likely" throughout this piece. There are exceptions! In some of the wealthiest census tracts in the state (measured by median household income, which is capped by the Census Bureau at $250,000), there are more Democrats than Republicans. But in less-wealthy tracts, there are far more registered Democrats.
Unsurprisingly, more Democratic parts of the state also tend to be the more urban ones. Even if you don't know where Connecticut's major cities are, you can probably spot them on the maps below. Those big dots with lots of Democrats? Cities.
But because voter registration is often correlated to age and wealth, it's often cities that are underrepresented in the electorate. Fewer city residents register to vote, meaning that they often make up more of the population than the voter pool. (Go back to the first map and you'll likely notice that.) One effect of this? Areas that vote more heavily Republican are also ones with a disproportionate number of voters relative to population.
Don't be misled by that use of "disproportionate." Just because Republican areas are more likely to be overrepresented in the voter pool doesn't mean that Republicans have a huge advantage in the state. They obviously don't, as election outcomes make clear. In most of the state, and particularly in those large cities, there are more registered Democrats than Republicans.
We can't ignore another factor that overlaps with partisanship, income and registration: race. A map of the state's non-white population - particularly Asian, Black and Hispanic residents - aligns with the partisan distribution and the placement of large cities.
There's a strong correlation between the percentage of a census tract that is non-white and how much more Democratic it is than Republican. That correlation remains strong in heavily Black census tracts, but is much weaker in Hispanic ones. This, too, is true across the U.S.
Again, though, the two-party framework is a bit outdated. You probably noticed on the map of partisanship that cities also have a large population of independents and members of third parties. This is in part because cities have a lot of people. But it's also because a lot of Connecticut voters aren't members of one of the two major parties.
In fact, if we consider our map of the state in terms of the political group that has the most members in any given region - Democrats, Republicans or something else - something else almost always wins. Again, big cities often have more Democrats than non-partisans or members of third parties. But it's almost always the case everywhere else that the plurality of voters are not affiliated with either of the two major parties.
One reason that Democrats still win most elections in the state is that those non-Democrats often vote for Democratic candidates. This is a common pattern among political independents; they generally vote consistently for one party or the other despite not being members of those parties. But another reason Democrats are successful is that there are still an awful lot of Democrats relative to Republicans.
If we look at the number of members of the two major parties relative to those who aren't in a census tract, we see that, in heavily Democratic places, there are a lot more partisans. That's not true in more Republican places.
One reason for this is that many non-Democrats in Connecticut opt to decline party affiliation rather than joining the Republican Party. It's a pattern we see elsewhere: In places with one dominant party, people who would in other places join the minority party often opt for no party at all.
Most of the non-partisans and members of third parties in Connecticut, though, are probably people who vote with the Democratic Party. Younger voters in particular often choose not to join the party, even if they often vote for Democrats and align with Democratic positions. For years, this pattern has been apparent, to little ill effect for Democratic candidates.
In recent years, though, that pattern has become shakier. Younger voters aren't committed to the Democratic Party in the way that older Republicans are, and they're more willing to opt for candidates who themselves buck the party.
You're less likely to see that sort of rebellion play out in Connecticut this summer because the parties close their primaries to non-members. To vote in the Democratic primary, you need to be a Democrat. But in November? The party will need an awful lot of those non-members to come out and support their candidates.
Read this story on ctinsider.com
