JAMES LILLIN
Staff Writer
Come next week, many Fredonia students will be casting their votes for the first time in their lives, navigating the complicated web of local, state and presidential candidates that fill their ballot.
On the state level, things look rather uncompetitive, with New York’s electoral votes routinely going to the Democratic presidential candidate since 1984, when Ronald Reagan won countrywide by historic margins.
The race for the Senate is even less competitive, with incumbent Sen. Chuck Schumer ahead of the Republican nominee, Wendy Long, by almost 23 points according to the latest RealClearPolitics polling average.
The set-in-stone reality of the statewide race, however, belies a far more fascinating and competitive environment at the local level, particularly in Chautauqua County.
“Chautauqua County was actually a local barometer of the national vote in presidential elections from 1980 to 2008,” said Politics and International Affairs Department Chair David Rankin, “kind of like the state of Ohio, with a majority of county residents voting for the winning presidential candidate in each election: Reagan in 1980 and 1984, Bush in 1988, Clinton in 1992 and 1996, Bush in 2000 and 2004 and Obama in 2008. In 2012, the trend was broken when a majority of Chautauqua County voted for Romney.”
This competitiveness is reflected in the local races as well, with both mayorships and congressional seats having gone both ways in recent years.
“In recent years, Fredonia and Dunkirk have elected both Democratic and Republican mayors, although both currently have Democratic mayors,” said Rankin. “As a byproduct of congressional redistricting, Fredonia has also recently had a Democratic U.S. House representative, Brian Higgins, and now the Republican incumbent Tom Reed.”
Chautauqua County’s competitiveness can be attributed to its unique and varied electorate, which makes it so that candidates from both parties have to vie hard for their vote.
“It has a college town, like Fredonia, and small cities, like Jamestown,” said Rankin, ”which tend to skew Democratic, along with numerous small towns and rural areas that trend increasingly Republican.”
When it comes to student voters, who lean overwhelmingly Democratic, the key question is less about who they will be voting for and more about how many students will actually turn out to vote.
“Many students are very interested, many are turned off and some are apathetic,” said political science professor Raymond Rushboldt. “I am uncertain about whether students feel as strongly as others in the population, perhaps not being as wedded to either candidate.”
Rushboldt’s view appears to be on-point when it comes to Fredonia, with the most recent Campus Voting Report by the National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement revealing that only about 31 percent of SUNY Fredonia voted in 2012, compared to a national student average of around 50 percent.
Still, Rushboldt has hope that this year might be different due to the stark differences between the major party candidates.
“As for voting,” said Rushboldt, “the differences of the candidates should be clear and may make the choice easier, in that sense.”