No county in true-blue New York state boasts a higher proportion of Democratic voters than the Bronx, where Republicans face an 11-to-one enrollment disadvantage, there were eight Barack Obama votes for every John McCain ballot four years ago, and Republicans aren’t even contesting half the state legislative races in the borough this year.
In the most expensive election in U.S. history, with the fate of the presidency possibly hinging on how a few counties in Ohio vote, and with control of the Senate to be decided in suburban Connecticut and central Pennsylvania, the Bronx is pretty far from the action.
But even though Bronx votes were taken for granted in 2004, lines still stretched along the sidewalk at rush hour as people waited to cast their vote for George W. Bush or John Kerry. And while there was no suspense about the outcome in 2008, there was still a long and celebratory wait at polling places in the borough. This year, though the rest of the country will take little notice, Bronxites by the hundreds of thousands will exercise their franchise.
That’s a story in itself, but as a reporting partnership between City Limits and City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism’s NYC News Service learned, there are other storylines playing out in the Bronx during the final act of campaign 2012:
On Election Day, CityWire will be following these shorelines and more with up-to-the-minute blog posts, photos, video and more. Sign up for updates here.
CUNY’s Tim Harper and Colleen Long were instrumental in conceiving and coordinating this project