Suraj Patel and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were the Democrats’ version of Tea Partiers in New York State. Both are exciting young minorities who challenged old, white, entrenched Democratic party leaders in congressional primaries on June 26.
Patel raised and spent $1.5 million according to pre-primary numbers from the Center for Responsive Politics, and Ocasio-Cortez raised a smaller, but still respectable $860,000.
On primary day, Patel raked in an impressive 16,995 votes in a two-way primary, while Ocasio-Cortez again lagged a bit, garnering 15,897 votes, also in a two-way primary. Here’s the weird part: Patel lost his race by nearly 18 points, while Ocasio-Cortez won hers by 15.
The disparity highlights an odd political wrinkle in places such as New York, Texas, and California that have many immigrant neighborhoods. Congressional districts with more immigrants, such as Ocasio-Cortez’s Bronx-Queens district, have far fewer voters than districts with fewer immigrants, such as Patel’s district in Manhattan’s east side.
These districts are the modern version of rotten boroughs, which were parliamentary districts in England before 1832 with few residents, and by few, we mean sometimes one or two (and a lot of sheep). Because the U.S. Constitution requires all congressional districts in each state to have the same population, today’s rotten boroughs distinguish themselves not by having fewer residents, but by having fewer voters.
At last count, Ocasio-Cortez’s district had the fewest registered voters of all 27 districts in New York. Hers has 353,000 while Patel’s has more than 500,000 registered voters.
When you look at actual turnout, the numbers get starker. In the median U.S. district, about 350,000 people cast a presidential ballot in the November 2016 elections. In Ocasio-Cortez’s district, fewer than 194,000 votes were cast, making it one of 19 districts in the country where turnout didn’t hit 200,000.
Congressional districts vary by population across states, thanks to the flukes of apportionment. Turnout varies by state due to the competitiveness of elections. So if we limit the analysis to New York State: The median New York district saw 290,000 votes for president. The wealthy district where Patel ran saw 307,000. Both of those numbers are about 50 percent more voters than the 194,000 in Ocasio-Cortez’s district, which had the second-lowest turnout in the state, following the neighboring 15th District.
Why do these two Bronx-based districts have fewer voters? Because they have more recent immigrants.
The two Bronx-based districts had about 400,000 citizens of voting age at the time, according to the American Community Survey. The median district in the U.S. has 525,000 voting-age citizens. Put another way, about 73 percent of the people living in America are voting-age citizens, while in these two Bronx districts, only about 55 percent of residents are voting-age citizens.
A small factor is youth: Hispanic immigrants have more children than the average American, and so more residents below voting age. Nationwide, about 24 percent of residents are minors, while in the 15th District, that number is closer to 30 percent.
Mostly, though, it’s noncitizenship.
The nine congressional districts in America with the lowest number of voting-age citizens are all at least 60 percent Hispanic. Across these nine districts, 23 percent of the residents are not citizens, according to Census Bureau data. Nationally, only 4 percent of residents are non-citizens.
Ocasio-Cortez’s district is 24 percent noncitizen, but is more diverse than those top nine districts, with large numbers of non-Hispanic immigrants.
After accounting for a slightly younger population and a much higher portion of noncitizens, we still don’t have a full explanation of the low turnout in these districts. The third factor: Even the immigrants who become citizens are less likely to vote.
About 62 percent of all eligible adults vote, according to the Census, compared to only 54 percent of immigrants.
Those top nine districts saw about 40 percent of voting-age citizens turn out to vote in 2016. The average turnout across those three states represented in those nine (Texas, California, and Illinois) was 56 percent.
These districts, with high numbers of noncitizens and high numbers of nonvoting naturalized citizens, overwhelmingly elect Democrats. Nineteen of the 20 districts with the fewest voting-age citizens are represented in the House by Democrats. (Rep. David Valadao of California’s San Jaoquin Valley is the sole exception.) They’re mostly in California, Texas, New York, and Arizona.
This isn’t a scandal. The Constitution prescribes that congressional districts should have equal population, not an equal number of citizens or eligible voters. Districts with large prisons have a similar dynamic. But the phenomenon of low-voter districts is interesting nonetheless. If you want takeaways, here are two:
First, liberal activists were shrewd to target the 14th District, because Ocasio-Cortez needed only a modest vote total in order to win.
Another takeaway: If you are a voter in a high-immigrant area, you have more of a voice in Congress, because you are part of far smaller voter pool.
