United States presidential election in New York, 2016

The 2016 United States presidential election in New York was held on November 8, 2016, as part of the 2016 General Election in which all 50 states plus The District of Columbia participated. New York voters chose electors to represent them in the Electoral College via a popular vote with the two major party's candidates claiming New York as their home state, the Republican Party's nominee, businessman Donald Trump, and running mate Indiana Governor Mike Pence against Democratic Party nominee, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her running mate, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine.

Contents

• Primary Elections
• Democratic primary
• Republican primary
• Republican Primary Results by County
• Polling
• Debates and Forums
• Candidates
• References

Hillary Clinton carried New York with 59.01% of the vote, while Donald Trump received 36.52% of the vote, a 22.49% Democratic victory margin.

New York State remained a solid blue state in the 2016 election, although Hillary Clinton received a smaller vote share than President Obama had in 2012, while Donald Trump slightly improved upon Mitt Romney's performance. Still, despite being born and raised in New York, and long being associated with the state, Trump decisively lost the popular vote there making it the first time since 1968 in which a winning presidential candidate lost their home-state.

Reflecting a strong nationwide trend of rural areas swinging hard against Clinton, Trump improved greatly upon recent Republican performances in rural Upstate New York. Upstate New York was historically a staunchly Republican region, although it had been trending Democratic since the 1990s, and Democrat Barack Obama had twice performed very strongly across both urban and rural upstate in the preceding two elections. Trump won 20 counties in New York State that voted for President Obama in 2012, 18 of which were rural upstate counties.

Clinton did win Upstate New York's traditionally Democratic cities and hold onto urban counties upstate. However Trump nevertheless also made gains in urban parts of upstate, which had long been in economic decline, due to his strength in economically distressed areas and his appeal to working class whites who traditionally vote Democratic. Trump's message on trade policy and pledge to halt job outsourcing appealed strongly to the Rust Belt region of the United States, where many local economies had been ravaged by loss of industrial jobs, which extends into Upstate New York cities like Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse. In Erie County, where Buffalo is located in Western New York bordering the Great Lakes, Clinton won only 51-44 compared to Obama's 57-41 victory in 2012. Clinton suffered her strongest swings against her in traditionally Democratic Northern New York along the Saint Lawrence River, becoming the first Democrat to lose Franklin County and St. Lawrence County since Michael Dukakis in 1988. Trump won St. Lawrence County 51-42, where Obama had won 57-41, and Franklin County 48-43, where Obama had won 62-36. Clinton barely held onto neighboring Clinton County 47-45, which Obama had also won 62-36.

The only upstate county where Clinton won by a stronger margin than Obama had in 2012 was the liberal Democratic stronghold of Tompkins County, home to the college town of Ithaca where Cornell University is located. Clinton and Obama both received 68% in the county, but Trump's unpopularity with young people and students led him to fall to only 24% of the vote compared to 28% for Romney.

Hillary Clinton's landslide statewide win was powered by an overwhelmingly lopsided victory in the massively populated five boroughs of New York City, the largest city in the United States, despite Donald Trump's longtime popular cultural association with the city. In New York City, Hillary Clinton received 80.0% of the vote compared to only 17.0% for Donald Trump. This represented a slight fall from Barack Obama's historic 81.2% in the city in 2012, and the borough of Staten Island flipped from Obama to Trump, however Trump also fell slightly citywide from Romney's 17.8%, and with huge victories in four boroughs Clinton's 63.0% victory margin over Trump was virtually unchanged from Obama's record 63.4% margin over Romney, making Clinton's win the second widest victory margin for a presidential candidate in New York City history.

With 2,191,869 votes from the 5 boroughs, Clinton also received more votes in New York City than any other presidential candidate in history, finally surpassing Lyndon Johnson's record vote total in New York City of 2,183,646 votes received in 1964.

Trump's birthplace borough of Queens gave Clinton over 75% of the vote and less than 22% to Trump. In Manhattan, home to Trump Tower, Trump's famous landmark residence, Clinton received nearly 87% while Trump received less than 10% of the vote, the worst performance ever for a major party presidential candidate in Manhattan. This made Trump's home borough one of only 3 counties in the state where Trump did worse than Mitt Romney had in 2012.

In the populous suburbs around New York City, Hillary Clinton won overall, although with the sole exception of her county of residence, there were strong swings against her compared to President Obama's performance. The downstate suburban counties around the city were historically Republican bastions, until Hillary's husband Bill Clinton made dramatic suburban gains for Democrats in the 1990s and easily swept every suburban New York county in his 1996 re-election campaign. North of the city, Clinton significantly further improved on Barack Obama's landslide margin in wealthy Westchester County, where the Clintons own their primary residence in Chappaqua, New York. Clinton won Westchester County 65-31 compared to Obama's 62-37 victory over Mitt Romney. Conversely, Trump made major gains on Long Island. Clinton won Nassau County by only a slightly reduced 6-point margin rather than the 8-point margin by which Obama had won it. However Suffolk County swung heavily to Trump, from a 51-47 win for Obama to a 51-45 win for Trump, the first time a Republican won Suffolk County since Bill Clinton narrowly lost it to George H.W. Bush by 1.5% in 1992.

While heavily Democratic New York City had secured consistent Democratic landslides in New York State for 3 decades, since 1992 every Democratic presidential candidate would have still carried New York State even without the massive Democratic vote margins provided by the 5 boroughs, albeit by substantially closer margins. In 2012, Obama won New York State outside of New York City with 54.03% of the vote compared to Mitt Romney's 44.54%. With Donald Trump having made major gains over Romney's performance across Upstate New York and improving overall in suburban downstate, Hillary Clinton was heavily dependent on New York City for her victory, receiving 2,191,869 votes to Trump's 467,254 votes, a citywide margin of 1,724,416 votes. However although just barely, Clinton did manage to continue the Democratic winning streak in New York State outside of New York City. Removing the 5 boroughs of New York City from the result, Clinton received 2,355,349 votes while Trump received 2,347,092 votes, meaning Clinton would have won New York State without the city by 8,257 votes, a margin of 0.17% out of all statewide votes cast outside of the city.

This presidential election marked the first time since 1944 when both party's presidential candidates had New York as their home state. In fact, it is also the first time since 1944 when both major party candidates even shared a home state, although only Trump was born in the state of the candidates.