https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/14/nyregion/peter-king-republicans-new-york.html
By Azi Paybarah
Representative Peter King, a Long Island Republican, announced this week that he would retire, ending his 28-year career in Congress. He said he wanted to spend more time with his family.
The move has set off a scramble for an open seat in a suburban district where Democratic Party enrollment has soared in recent years.
That surge is part of a broader transformation in New York’s suburbs, where Democrats are overtaking Republicans. Demographic and socioeconomic changes are fueling the shift, and, as my colleague Vivian Wang wrote, they mirror a nationwide trend: Historically moderate or conservative suburban voters are slowly tipping left.
Here’s how party registration has fared across some of New York’s suburbs, and in the city itself, since 1996:
Long Island
Between 1996 and 2019, the number of registered Democrats in Nassau County jumped by more than 150,000, while the number of registered Republicans dropped by 30,000, according to figures from the state Board of Elections. Democrats there now outnumber Republicans 411,000 to 328,000.
In Suffolk County, the Democratic Party added more than 162,000 members, while the G.O.P. gained fewer than 18,000. Democratic voters now narrowly lead Republican voters, 366,000 to 332,000.
“For an old-timer like me, those numbers are almost incomprehensible,” Lawrence Levy, the executive dean of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University, told Ms. Wang, my colleague. “It is not my mother and father’s suburbs, and it never will be.”
Other New York suburbs
In Westchester County, the Democratic Party has gained 123,000 voters since 1996, while the Republican Party has lost more than 20,000. In neighboring Rockland County, the Democrats gained more than 26,000 registrations, while the Republicans picked up about 6,000.
In 1996 in Orange County, there were 16,000 more Republicans than Democrats. Today, more than 89,000 voters are registered as Democrats, while 74,000 are registered as Republicans.
New York City
Democrats have outnumbered Republicans in the city for decades, and that advantage is growing.
In 1996, there were 2.5 million registered Democrats; half a million voters were registered as Republicans. Since then, the Democratic Party has gained nearly a million voters, while the number of registered Republicans has remained flat.
The Democratic Party’s biggest increases have been in Brooklyn, where it gained 347,000 voters, and in Queens, where it gained 250,000.
The G.O.P.’s top gain came in Staten Island, where it has added nearly 23,000 voters since 1996. The Democratic Party gained nearly 32,000 voters.
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