It has become a near sacred belief for some folks on the internet that they don’t believe the 2024 Election results. I get it, they’re a nightmare. The idea that nearly 50% of the public would re-elect Trump after everything seems impossible. When you understand how close virtually every Presidential Election other than 2008 has been this century though, it starts to make at least some sense though.

Enter New York, specifically Rockland County where I worked on a County Executive race, more than a decade back. It is a politically peculiar place. It’s a very purple county in suburban New York City. It’s got the highest percentage of Jewish people of any county in America. It’s incredibly diverse in general. It’s got super, super wealthy and very working class people living together. It’s a part of the swing NY-17 Congressional District, one of the most competitive in America. It’s really, really expensive to run a campaign there. And they have a rather significant Hasidic Jewish population, now sitting over 50,000 in the district. They tend to vote together, as a block, getting them the name “the block” amongst politicos. Once the leaders decide who they are backing, and to what level, everyone does their job. It doesn’t fit neat partisan or ideological politics, and so it confuses many political class people who are new to the area. This often puts them at odds with other groups in the county, who don’t particularly love their voting power. The East Ramapo School District there has been controversial, but that’s nothing new.

I’m not shocked that a friend sent me an article about a challenge to their 2024 Election results, but I was immediately skeptical. Rockland is the king of weird election results. What’s more, Vice-President Harris underperformed President Biden and Secretary Clinton in general in New York. Senator Gillibrand was facing weak, token opposition at best, and some of the national hot button issues were less so problems for her. When I first looked at Smart Elections’ Blue Sky post comparing Harris and Gillibrand’s numbers in several voting districts, I immediately assumed they are simply “Block” voting districts, where the Hasidic population chose Donald Trump, but still wanted to vote for the incumbent Democratic Senator. There are absolutely districts in Rockland County where Trump probably won almost every vote, and so did Gillibrand. There are a few problems with my explanation though. First, just having the district number isn’t enough for me today to be sure those were “block” districts. Second, the lawsuit does point to other things, like statistical analysis, that suggests a problem. So it’s possible I’m wrong here.

My guess is that Harris generally underperformed fairly popular incumbents across the state, and Rockland was no different. My second thought is that the lopsided districts will be “block” areas. If anyone knowledgeable on the subject comes across this post, please feel free to keep me updated on this.