Few New Yorkers Want Democratic or Republican Parties to Control the State Senate

As you may or may not know, though New York's State Assembly is dominated by Democrats, its State Senate is almost evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, who have traded majority control of the body at least three times in the last five years, according to this graph at Wikipedia.  At the present moment, the outcome of three State Senate elections has still yet to be determined, and so it remains unclear whether one of the corporate parties will win a majority or if the upper house will end up with a 50/50 split, or rather, a 31-31, split between the two.  A new poll from Sienna College asked New Yorkers what outcome they would prefer and it turns out few New Yorkers want the Democratic or Republican parties to have majority control of the body.  Transcribed from the poll [pdf]:
Which of the following options do you think would be best for New York?
• Democrats retain a narrow 2-seat majority and control the Senate: 22%
• Republicans take a narrow 2 or 4-seat majority and control the Senate: 22%
• Regardless of the outcome, Republicans and Democrats should share power, jointly running the Senate: 53%
Of course, the simplest way to ensure that neither the Democrats nor Republicans have majority control of any legislative body is to elect enough third party and independent candidates so that neither corporate party has a majority in the body.  

2 comments:

pete healey said...

It's important to remember that control of the Senate will be decisive for control of the legislature for the next ten years, since reapportionment begins in December (when the Census numbers are published). Formally, it begins in January and there will be a huge struggle over it, no matter which party controls the Senate, because the new Governor has staked out a tough position on gerrymandering and will have to stick to his guns if he is going to retain any credibility.
The 50% who want both parties to run the Senate in a cooperative and collaborative way just aren't paying attention.

DLW said...

Both major parties need to be reincarnated, as would occur if third parties cd get elected to the state assembly thru the use of 3-seated PR...

 
http://www.wikio.com