You go New York. You know what's important.

Great post!!! When I read the results on NYT I couldnt believe that people are that lazy to not cast their vote!!!

let the eminent domain abuse continue

I vote by mail .

That's pretty pitiful. Proportionally even Detroit out voted New York imagine that. Woot woot!!!

I believe Detroit's official voter turnout percentage was 20%. They were expecting between 20% and 25%

It was a vote between a douche and a turd ... but yeah the republicans got out n voted, that is the plague of urban areas... but hey if u don't vote then u cant bitch...
U kinda over shot the estimate.. but indeed i get the ponit

I believe people are starting to feel helpless and why vote if the system is broken. Wall Street and the banks really screwed a lot of people and there has been no legal recourse only gov. aid to the banking systems, but not to the people who've lost jobs or their homes.

Words don't count anymore--there needs to be action.

That is truly sad! With turn out like this, it's no wonder your leaders don't listen to us.

Voters have no confidence in government. It is every where. Google my city, East Chicago, Indiana. Or as it is know here in the region, "The People's Republic of East Chicago" The level of local government corruption has simply changed hands through the different candidates. New Yorkers probably feel the same way.

I'll bet they'd show up if told there were free sneakers and iPods.

Okay. These number are going to be a bit off because they're from nine years ago. From the US Census Bureau website:

2000 Census estimate - 8,008,278 people living in NYC.

2000 Census estimate of people under 18 - 24.4% of total population
24.4% X 8,008,278 = 1,954,020 under 18 (rounded up)

8,008,278 - 1,954,020 = 6,054,258 people who are eligible to vote in NYC

6,054,258 - 1,063,776 total votes from 2009 = 4,990,482 people who did not vote... IF THIS WERE THE YEAR 2000

But it 2009. So lets try this all again with a educated guess.

2008 census estimate - 8,363,710 people living in NYC

Considering growth lets say 25% of the total population is under 18

25% X 8,363,710 = 2,090,928 people are under 18 (rounded up)

8,363,710 - 2,090,928 = 6,272,782 people total who did not vote.

So my original math is off by about 1 million. And this is all with a guess. But 6.3 is still a very very large number.

whats the number of homeless people in new york?

I don't understand what the big deal is. Wasn't this country founded on the disenfranchisement of ethnic minorities? He's a billionaire for Pete's sake isn't he supposed to rig elections!? I hope less people vote everywhere next year and they sell the rights to our SS #s to a Chinese real estate securities trading company.

Technically speaking, the author should clarify if the 8.3 million is the total number of residents, or total number of eligible voters. This would make a difference.

If I am right, this can be a great sign.
This can look like most people are lacking a political conscience, however it might be the very opposite. I want to see it as a great sign of independence or a start of "think with your own mind", dropping "the sheeple".

A possible explanation to this is that people know that voting for a "stranger" won't change things as learned from the past.
They might get involved, take some kind of action, volunteer, march in protest rather than voting for no more or less than a last name.
People are understanding more and more the difference between politic and politicians.

The day I see a proportional decline in participation like this one but for a protest march or a campaign, than I will think something is wrong and we might be getting numb and/or isolated from true politics.
Until then I wouldn't worry, instead let's make the "change" a public domain, that's where it belongs.

By not voting the citizens of NYC are showing they were not content with any of the candidates running for Mayor. They saw it as a waste of their time. Most Politicians have shown us time and time again that they will say exactly what you want to hear, but will never have any intentions on acting on those promises.

It's probably because it was an off year election.

it's the way we have set up the voting system in america. We need to move voting day to a saturday and give people more straight forward information or give people the day off on election day like they do in most democratic countries in the world.
This is another way our goverment is letting us know that our vote dosent count.

An hourly employee ( which is most people) cannot afford to lose precious time no matter how important voting is, eating/shelter/healthcare becomes more important. So their voices never get heard although they are the ones that get hurt in the long term from the bad decisions made by our government.

In Australia it is mandatory to vote, but I don't see it being law in the US.

This may sound dumb but look at the figures ... 1,063,776 voted 7,236,224 didn't vote and it took 557,059 votes to win. Now ... say that only 10% of those who didn't vote refused because they thought the system was corrupt ... if that same small percentage had an alternative candidate that would be a victory.

In the nicest possible way, I say ... if you don't agree with the system that you have to live in day in, day out then get off your asses and do something about it ... find good people ...start a website, build up numbers through an email campaign and change things ... start it off as a hobby, I bet you it'll get serious pretty quickly.

it's everywhere, in all the states. People not voting.

its not bloomberg's fault they didn't vote, he may have spent alot of money but he won.

Don`t understand why they want everyone to wait on lines while they could just vote trough the Internet !
A Website should be established where everyone can log in with there SSC number to make sure that the person is real and legal to vote .
Example : most of my Friends were working and no employee is going to tolerate to give a day off for voting .
That`s reality .

What the what!? Don't you New Yorkers give a damn about your future? How about the total BS about Bloomberg taking out term limits to allow himself to run?

It is not unreasonable to refuse to participate in a broken system.

That is sad! Why people don't care when it comes to local politics, I will never understand!

The 7,236,224 people whod didn't vote assumes everyone is eligible to vote. Even infants.

go go gadget republic

Sad, isn't it? In my district/precinct we have over 300 people registered to vote. That's just the ones that bothered to register to vote. Only 64 people showed up to vote on Tuesday.

Why should they vote for one lying asshole when we all ready have one !

People in NY are more worry about jobs and what's happening to their homes. I can't speak for all of the people that didn't vote, but let's be realistic here, neither candidate offer much in change and help.

staten island sucks

This election was close. Much much closer then people predicted. If two million more people had got to the polls the out come would have been different.

Not sure about those outer parts of queens. Don't think they're really all that red considering the poverty level.