Talk:New York City mayoral elections

Improving this article

Does somebody knows how to improve this article ? I can't find election results for NYC Mayor before 2001. We know that in 1997, Giuliani won by a large margin, carrying 4 out of 5 boroughs (I presume he lost only in The Bronx, and that the 1993 and 1989 elections were close races, but that doesn't make an article. --Revas 21:45, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

• There are election results going back to 1834 (the first year it became an elected position) in the The Encyclopedia of New York City. I suppose I can start adding it from 1993 (it was published 1995) and then going back.--Pharos 05:00, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

• • I have added returns (including boroughs and percentages) for 1897 to 1925, with the basic numbers coming from the 1929 and 1943 World Almanac and Book of Facts, plus a little commentary and a couple of references. [I can also provide borough returns for 1929-1941 (from the 1943 World Almanac) and 1950-53 (from 1957's), if they can be easily incorporated into the existing lines. That means that the years for which we still need borough returns are: 1945 and 1949 (probably obtainable from an early 1950's World Almanac) and 1957, 1961, 1965, 1969 and 1973 (probably harder to get, since my 1966 World Almanac has no borough returns).]

• • Additional information (e.g. the first names of some of the minor-party candidates) and of course correction of errors and clarification of ambiguities is always welcome. I'm sorry that I don't know enough Wikitable formatting to make my format more compatible with the rest of the article and Wikipedia conventions, but on the other hand the style I've used (or been forced to use) allows me, for example, to show which boroughs went by how much to which candidates, and the union of Manhattan and Bronx returns before 1917. If anyone can fit these preferences into more standard formatting, I'd be grateful; I'd be even more grateful for anyone's help in right-aligning the numbers before 1977. Shakescene (talk) 00:30, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

1997 Results

Found election results for NYC mayor's race (99% precincts reporting) at CNN site. Added simple chart (borough breakdown was not available.) http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1997/gen/resources/election97/results.html

Added Mayor Giuliani's name to line 2. Nhprman 19:05, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Clean-up

I'm going to start a serious clean-up of this page - making the election results uniform to other Wikipedia pages, adding more results, and adding more details about the elections. 67.160.106.255 02:39, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Coincidentally, I started my own major clean-up 3-4 days ago, but due to time restrictions as of late, I haven't exactly completed it. It's great to hear someone else out there wants to put in some dedication to such an unfortunate eyesore of an article. I'll be glad to collaborate with you in any way possible. I purely am dedicated to fixing up this article for the point of making Wikipedia a better place. I have absolutely nothing to do with politions, New York, or even the USA. I'm just a simple minded Aussie trying to pitch in. In regards to your clean-up, go for it, and I'm here to help. Raider2044 ^{Bio • Talk • Contribs} 09:40, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for working on this page, but take care not to erase useful informations, such as Borough level results or minor parties (Bloomberg was also on the Conservative Party ticket in 2001, Green on the Working Family ticket and Hevesi did not run as a Democrat but in the Liberal party ticket. That's why I wonder if the election box used for legislatives election is revelant here. --Revas 15:09, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Revas, I have indeed thought about all the information that would be lost to using the election box templates. It is due to this sole fact that I am "hard-coding" the whole lot, and why it is taking a little longer. I expect to put in a fair amount of time tonight and have a somewhat cleaner output to display. I do not want to rewrite the article, I just want to bring in some continuity. Cheers. Raider2044 ^{Bio • Talk • Contribs} 10:22, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Following up on my previous comment, I have implemented my "clean up" version. I have not removed any previous information, and have infact included a tiny bit more (re: 1997). If you have any problems with me just going ahead, then criticise away, but I felt my version did not take away from the previous setup, I have merely brought in some continuity. I hope it is accepted by you guys, I know that you Revas in particular take great pride in this article. In regards to expanding it even further, at the moment it is fairly data filled, and lacks any true journalism. I will venture out to find information such as dates. It truly is hard to find much of this information, which surprises me. Happy editing.

[See my comments about formatting my own contributions in the first section of this page] Shakescene (talk) 00:37, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

the Greatest mayor of all (NOT!)

I'm surprised that nobody noticed that there were two elecitons missing. Impy, O'Brian, and Holy Joe were all mayors, too, ya know!!

The 1932 and '50 special elections were quite unusual, espeically since Impy was elected as an independent.

Also, the NYC Young Repbublicans club has a website and there, I found out which nonentities were nominated by the Republcians for Mayor in 1953 and '57, plus Louis Lefkowitz, who wasn't a nonentity.

Raider2044 ^{Bio • Talk • Contribs} 06:33, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your work, you really did great and long awaited job. I'll try to write some text in order to explain the context of each election. --Revas 17:35, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Fusion candidates

Are there records of the votes Fusion candidates got on their respective tickets, i.e. at the last election, how many Bloomberg got as a Republican and as an Independence candidate? --William Quill 11:09, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Summary Tables

I took a lot of time to compose this chart to show the winners in boldface. However, I also found that the natural impulse to [[frame]] the candidates' names so the reader could link directly to the candidate's Wikipedia article made the patterns of victory and defeat almost unreadable, so please resist the temptation. However, when we can find another way of showing wins and losses, I think that such Wikipedia links would be very desirable. (I have included such links to the minor parties and their abbreviations.) Shakescene (talk) 22:02, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

I found another way to show winners (colored boxes), so I've added my own links to Wikipedia articles. This is no longer a problem. Shakescene (talk) 21:55, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Length of this Article

There are some very strong arguments both for keeping this long article intact (unbroken) and for breaking it into smaller articles, either topically or (more likely) chronologically between 1897-1949 and 1950-2009 (no overlapping candidates). I started this section of the discussion page to hear what other readers and contributors think. (By the way, although I have added most of the bulk to this article, I myself use a small, modest computer with a slow telephone dial-up connection.) Shakescene (talk) 06:59, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Definitely start by moving the overview elsewhere. Talk page? Jd2718 (talk) 00:52, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Your talk page or mine? (Or this talk page?) Apart from needing to do other things, I want to wait a week or two so that I can look at the Overview with fresh eyes to see what's essential, what can be summarized, what can be moved (with or without leaving a summary), and what's redundant or could just be more tightly-written without losing content. (By the way, thanks for catching and correcting my oversights and errors. It might have taken me a while, if not forever, to notice them.) Shakescene (talk) 18:03, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I've taken the Technical Notes and removed them to this page (below). I like the overview in concept, but it's a bit long - perhaps a critical eye could be cast at the individual sections.

I am inclined to believe the article does need to be in smaller pieces. 1) where do I look if I just want the year-by-year totals? (without primary or run-off or borough breakdown). 2) where do I look for discussion on the ALP vs the Socialist Party? Should there be one article per election, plus an overview article? (I don't know, but at this point it is worthwhile to throw more things out there) Jd2718 (talk) 21:49, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm not against doing something about the bulk of this article. (1) I put in the Length of Article section to see what others thought, wanted and needed, because I sincerely see the advantages and disadvantages of different approaches (including leaving most of the stuff in one place). I put in instructions because I wanted average readers' reactions, and entering comments here is not an intuitive procedure.

(2) Experienced Wikipedians and techies may know all about printing, but the average reader emphatically does **not** (I had to experiment with "Page Preview", etc. to see what is likely to come out.) And the average reader may just want to print out one or two elections (say, Giuliani's or LaGuardia's). So, although they can no doubt be better written, the "Technical Notes" are two sections I want to keep early and accessible to readers, while other sections might well be better placed elsewhere (see below). I haven't restored the Technical Notes yet, because I don't want to get into a revert war without talking first.

(3a) While the first Summary Table is intended to give a simple overview, I agree that there may also well be a place for another article or page with less detail for someone to just skim and compare city-wide returns for major candidates (similar to the NY Gubernatorial Elections page, which doesn't break down between, say, NY City and upstate, or between different party lines for the same candidate, although there are enough data to do that for many elections.)

(3b) What I'm really looking to cut or move is the essay (not originally intended as such) on Some Characteristics of mayoral elections (I originally entitled it an "outline sketch" but that became too wordy). I want to wait a week or two to mull over and think about what are the basic things about New York's municipal elections that "everyone knows" if he or she is knowledgeable about NYC politics, but few people know if they're non-New Yorkers (like me) or don't follow Big Apple politics. What's really needed as I said in the article is a separate narrative or explanatory article about the "History of NYC Mayoral Elections", or even better the "History of NYC municipal politics" (City Council, Board of Estimate, Borough President, Comptroller, Public Advocate, the balanced ticket, etc.) But whether it's just my bare-bones explanation or something fuller, it might well be a good place for the shorter listing described in (3a) above.

(3c) The "Collapse of the Socialist Vote" section attached to 1933 does cover the Socialists and ALP, but what I need to think out is how much needs to stay in this article (a short textual summary? the pink table?) and what can become a sub-article. The difficulty I have is that I don't know enough off-hand (or from my own books) about the constellation of socialist/communist/ALP involvement in NYC municipal politics as a whole. Having an article about just socialists (or for that matter Conservatives or Liberals) running for Mayor is a little too cramped a subject for an article, especially since it was much easier to elect, or try to elect, Socialist or ALP members of the City Council or Board of Aldermen from "red" neighborhoods than citywide officials like Mayor.

(4) I definitely tend to at least part of your inclination, and have set up dummy articles for every year before 1997 (and solicited contributions in "Suggestions for writers"). Someone knowledgeable surely has something worth saying about Lindsay's elections in 1965 and 1969, or LaGuardia's in 1929-1941, or the wartime election of 1917. I think there's still value in having all the November borough returns on one page for comparison, but some of the primaries at least at borough level (as in 2001 and 2005) could be moved to pages for individual years, especially if those pages have some narrative (again compare with the Governors' Elections, where most dummy pages have at least the bare returns at the top). As I said in "Suggestions for writers", I think that when a separate article is written, the narrative about that election on this page could be reduced to about 3-15 lines, just to provide continuity and comparison. Shakescene (talk) 04:55, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

While we are waiting to hear other voices and comments (if they arrive... maybe we should request comment) I'd like to point out that many wikipedia articles on similar topics end up looking like glorified almanac entries. I think we have something much closer to an encyclopedia article here. Thanks for the effort. Jd2718 (talk) 22:16, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

I restored the "Length of Article" section to the top of the article in order to solicit others' responses. Thanks for the compliment, although of course this article, or a parallel historical article, needs more balance (which I'm not well-equipped to provide) for those interested in, say, Seth Low's or Jimmy Walker's or Robert Wagner's elections. Shakescene (talk) 20:52, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

shorter code

There's room for some totally non-destructive shortening of this article by rewriting the code. I haven't mastered all the necessary Wikimedia skills (such as coloring single rows), but someone who understands Wiki markup, or who could create new templates might be able to cut down on the number of kilobytes quite painlessly. [I did right-align almost all my own tables (e.g. 1897-1941) at the top in order to save right-aligning individual number cells, but found that it's actually better to leave the names and parties right-aligned, too, because it lines up all the last names and keeps them closer to the numbers while still leaving white space and variety.] Shakescene (talk) 05:30, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Map

I agree that the map (showing Bloomberg carrying Queens & Staten Island in 2001) had become redundant where it was, but it's useful for non-New Yorkers (and some New Yorkers) to have some map for reference (e.g. to see that Queens is is the furthest borough from Staten Island). Does someone have the technical skills to recolor Brooklyn and Manhattan in a second version of the map to show that they shifted to Bloomberg between 2001 and 2005, while he kept Queens & S.I.? That would be a useful reinforcement and show non-trivial information, as well as serving as a general reference of boroughs for all years and brightening up the long, grey tables of numbers. There is a non-election map in the Five Boroughs article, but unfortunately its color conventions (purple, orange, etc.) just don't match ours very well. Shakescene (talk) 05:30, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Technical notes

(I removed this section from the main article) Jd2718 (talk) 21:49, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

(I restored this section to the main article, to help readers.) Shakescene (talk) 20:54, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Discussion of the article belongs on the discussion page. I understand your motivation, but it does not represent practice on WP. Jd2718 (talk) 15:30, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Length of this article

There are strong arguments both for and against breaking this article up into shorter articles (most likely between 1949 and 1950). If you have opinions or suggestions about the length, please visit the Discussion Page for this article (use the tab at the very top of this page), and after reading other readers' comments, click the "Edit" tab to offer your own.

Printing tips

This page should print out normally from Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and other Internet browsers on ordinary (letter-sized) paper, if the pages are set to "Landscape", with the horizontal width greater than the vertical height (rather than "Portrait"). Use the "Page Setup" and "Print Preview" functions under "File" or "Print" to see what the pages will look like and to make adjustments.

What will be lost in moving from screen to paper are (1) color in the statistical tables (but not italics or emphasis), and (2) links to other parts of this article and to other articles in Wikipedia (but not links to sources outside Wikipedia).

Suggestions for writers

As this is written in April 2008, separate articles of any length (which can be linked from this page) about any and all of the elections before 1997 are sorely needed, especially about such important and exciting ones as those of 1917, 1933 and 1965. Shorter narrative explanations on this page (about 3 to 15 lines) would also be helpful for most of the elections.

• [Blank articles have been started for each election; anyone who wants to fill the empty space for a particular election with words, figures or facts can just open the box at the bottom of this page (using "v" or "show") for Mayoral elections in New York City and click the relevant year.]

More details are also needed, in April 2008, for many of the statistical tables on this page, such as the total vote, minor parties, separate party lines for major candidates, the full names of some minor candidates, and the borough-by-borough returns for 1945, 1949, 1957, 1961, 1965, 1969, 1973 and 1997. [Those who would like to add to, correct or improve the reporting of a particular election can just click the "Edit" link closest to that election.]

"Mayoralty"?

I'm pretty sure that's the wrong form of the word, and it should be "New York City mayoral elections", while you could refer to Bloomberg's tenure as "Bloomberg's mayoralty". First I want to check with someone with more grammar knowledge than I have before moving the page.--Muboshgu (talk) 20:39, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Although I've put untold hours into this page since last spring, I've never particularly liked the style, since "mayoral" is much more colloquial (and consistent with the style for New York City mayoral election, 2001, etc.) But "mayoralty" isn't really incorrect grammatically, just clumsy. Perhaps the analogy was with New York City Council elections (rather than Conciliar Elections). Nouns have been used as adjectives for as long as English has been a language (e.g. Television Set, Kitchen Table, Egg Shell), and it just didn't seem worth my effort to change all the places where New York City mayoralty elections (and more trickily, links to particular election subsections such as New York City mayoralty elections#1921 & 1925) is now linked. There is a redirect from New York City mayoral elections, so the actual damage (e.g., for someone looking under the latter title) is rather limited. And there must now be links to the current title on external and dated sites outside Wikimedia's power to change. On the other hand, if someone wants to put all the effort into making a truly complete, careful and thorough move, I will far from heartbroken. —— Shakescene (talk) 21:37, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeah it's nothing really, and the redirect is there, but it's bugging me just enough that unless anyone objects, I may do it.--Muboshgu (talk) 02:06, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

And I was just thinking, while it may be City Council (rather than conciliar) elections, it's almost never U.S. Presidency elections (as vs presidential). The tricky part comes where the adjective is not a readily-recognized everyday word (e.g. gubernatorial) or essentially (for the purpose of easy communication) non-existent, such as in elections for Lieutenant Governor (lieutenant-gubernatorial?), Comptroller (comptrollership?), Public Advocate (advocatorial?), Attorney-General, Secretary of State (secret? secretarial?) or Sheriff. But we do have mayoral and presidential. —— Shakescene (talk) 06:00, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

It is an interesting quirk of the language. English doesn't always make sense. I'm justifying the move as "mayoral" is more common than "mayoralty". And I'll handle the redirects.--Muboshgu (talk) 15:29, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

1977 GOP Primary

Why no information on the 1977 Republican primary between Goodman (who won the nomination) and Farber (who lost, but still had the Conservative line)? Dvd Avins (talk) 20:20, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Probably because the Republican primary results (unlike the Democratic ones) aren't listed at our main source for the 1957-93 elections, the 1995 edition of The Encyclopedia of New York City. I'll see if there's some way to slip in the bare numbers available at New York City mayoral election, 1977#Republican primary, which don't list results by borough. Any statistics or explanatory commentary you can add (preferably with some kind of source) would be extremely helpful at both pages. Remember that many readers are non-New Yorkers (like me) or (unlike me) weren't following politics in the 1970's (and thus wouldn't recognize Roy Goodman's or Barry Farber's names, or the contexts of their careers). —— Shakescene (talk) 21:30, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't have sources, so I'll let you handle it as you see fit. One item of note is that while the first Jewish mayor (Abe Beame) had only been elected four years earlier, 3 of the four general election candidates (Koch, Goodman, and Farber) were Jewish. And since the vast majority of New York Jews were Democrats (then even more so than now) it's also remarkable that both contenders for the GOP nomination were Jewish. Dvd Avins (talk) 00:49, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

I see there's no page for Farber. He was a conservative radio talk show host. Dvd Avins (talk) 00:50, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

In fact there is a page for Barry Farber, as I find out after writing all that stuff below. It hadn't linked on the election table, which used his ballot name Barry M. Farber, so I've just fixed that link. —— Shakescene (talk) 04:35, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

I was given to understand that Barry Farber had once been a liberal (if Republican or maverick independent) radio commentator/host who perhaps later became more conservative. Of course, 30-50 years ago, liberal and Republican were not mutually exclusive terms in New York politics. But I don't know much. The material I added or transferred to this article and to New York City mayoral election, 1977 was at about the same level of detail as given to other candidates, but it would be nice to explain in more detail if Goodman at that point represented the "Rockefeller" or Rockefeller/Javits/Keating wing of the GOP and Farber some other tendency or wing, or whether the contest was more one of differences of record, experience, approach and personality (or patronage). —— Shakescene (talk) 03:56, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

P.S. The Encyclopedia of NYC has no further information on Farber or Roy Goodman, other than that the latter as State Senator presided over a Charter review commission from 1973 to 1975. And looking up WMCA, which was one of Farber's outlets, I see I'd probably been confusing him, at least some of the time, with another WMCA host, Barry Gray. —— Shakescene (talk) 04:16, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Merge from Characteristics page

I BOLDly moved the content from Characteristics of New York City mayoral elections into this article, but it was reverted. No other city has as two separate such articles; compare this to Mayoral elections in Chicago, which contains content similar to both current pages in a single article.

I also don't think the sheer amount of detail in the current article is necessary or helpful. To return to the Chicago page, it has simpler tables that only display candidates and their votes; more detail can be found in each individual mayoral election article. Granted, many NYC mayoral elections didn't have their own articles until the past couple of years, but I think SPINOFFs are needed in the current article to trim it down and make it more manageable.  – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 13:43, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

@John M Wolfson: I confirm that the structure of the article is unusual and also that having separate articles for election and characteristics of elections not intuitive. However though it also seems hasty to delete it all at once in a single edit without discussion.

Could some of this spin out into another article in anticipate of individual articles for individual elections? I know that most cities do not get mayor election articles, but also, NYC alone has an economy which is greater than that of most countries. The mayor of NYC is in some ways more powerful than the leaders of many countries, and consequently this is an important election which media covers heavily.

Instead of changing all content at once, could you break this down into multiple smaller moves and discussions? Maybe there is a home for some of this stuff rather than deleting it. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:03, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

I've said that we should spin off most of the content to individual election articles, which I personally have done with such articles as 1929 New York City mayoral election, and then incorporate material from the characteristics page onto here. Also, most (American, at least) cities do get mayoral election pages, it's just that a) they don't get two separate articles on the matter and b) their articles aren't as unwieldy as this page is right now, and while NYC is unique it's not so unique to justify such a mess.  – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 14:07, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

• Since there has been no further discussion I have merged what I felt was worth merging from the characteristics page to this page. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 22:18, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Italics for DeBlasio?

Is there a reason why DeBlasio is not italicized for the 2017 election (in the first big table)? Wasn't he the sitting mayor at the time? 2604:2000:EFC0:2:741E:AD4E:20E7:E5C (talk) 03:55, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

• Your point is very well-taken, so I made the adjustment you suggested. I created this table with italicized mayors seeking re-election, but no doubt it was updated for 2017 by another editor looking just at the previous line without noticing the convention in the other lines above that. —— Shakescene (talk)