Downtown’s Rise Augurs Political Shift

A once-sleepy center-city voting district has emerged as New Haven’s elections powerhouse — with implications for this year’s mayoral election.

That district is Ward 7, centered in the eastern stretches of downtown.

Over the past decade, the district, once a lower-traffic polling center where you rarely waited to vote, has emerged as the top producer of voters among New Haven’s 30 wards. Voters — some of them drawn to new downtown apartment buildings like 360 State and four separate complexes in the College-Crown-High-George block — have had to wait hours to cast ballots in lines that snake outside the Hall of Records, up Orange Street, and halfway around the block on Elm. (One voter who moved downtown in 2010, retired New York Times Supreme Court correspondent Linda Greenhouse, wrote this account of her experiences at the polls.)

The surge of apartment construction and the post-redistricting addition of a high turnout East Rock neighborhood have helped double the ward’s numbers of registered voters and votes since the start of the decade.

It’s a ward the Justin Elicker won 512 to 225 in the 2013 mayoral general election that he lost overall to Toni Harp — a mayor he’s challenging again for the office this year.

The Independent reviewed nine years of ward-by-ward voter registration and turnout data, covering nine general elections and seven Democratic primaries. (There were no citywide Democratic primaries in 2014, when Dannel Malloy ran unopposed for the gubernatorial nomination, or in 2015, when Toni Harp ran unopposed for the mayoral nomination.)

Those 16 elections chart a dramatic increase in both registered voters and voter turnout in the cowboy-boot-shaped local legislative district that covers parts of Downtown, East Rock, Wooster Square, Ninth Square, and Dwight.

What’s New? Sohu

Part of that increase has come thanks to a consequential redrawing of ward boundaries in 2012, which went into effect in early 2014.

Ward 7 gobbled up most of the South of Humphrey Street (SoHu) neighborhood from East Rock’s Ward 9 during the redistricting, infusing it with hundreds of high turnout voters from Lincoln Street, Bradley Street, Pearl Street, and Clark Street.

But the downtown district’s rise to electoral prominence hasn’t just been on the back of SoHu. 

It has also coincided with the city’s recent unprecedented construction boom of mostly market-rate apartments, much of which has taken place downtown.

In August 2010, 500 luxury apartments came online at 360 State St. Five years later, another 168 apartments opened up at the College & Crown complex at 200 College St.

Metro Star opened 70-plus new apartments on Crown Street, NHR Properties opened another 10 in the historic Palladium Building on Orange, and, in the months and years ahead, many hundreds more are planned within the ward for projects on Audubon Street, State Street, Chapel Street, and elsewhere. 

While many of these new complexes market themselves more to itinerant Yale graduate students than to long-term residents invested in local politics, they’ve nevertheless already boosted Ward 7’s registrations and actual votes by the hundreds.

The ward will likely be diced up during the next redistricting to ensure a more even population distribution throughout city legislative districts. But that won’t happen for at least another three years, after the decennial federal census in 2020 and the subsequent state assembly redistricting the year after.

Until then, as more apartments come online, Ward 7 seems poised to continue its upward swing at the center of the city’s electoral map. And as the city’s mayoral election season heats up, the downtown ward may prove to be one of the more consequential parts of town for candidates, who will need to win over a diverse mix of high-end homeowners, middle-income renters, transitory Yalies, and long-term tenants at the Ninth Square Residences and the Charles McQueeney Towers.

The Numbers

A look at recent election results data reveals just how much the ward’s voter base has grown since the start of the decade.

During the November 2010 general election, the ward held 2,052 registered voters, 883 of whom actually came out to vote. The ward ranked 19th among its fellow wards that year in both categories.

By the November 2018 general election, which was also a federal congressional and statewide contest, the ward’s number of registered voters had jumped to 3,903, and its number of votes cast had more than doubled to 2,119. The ward ranked first that year in both categories.

The years and elections in between show a steady incline in voter registrations and turnout, with a tremendous peak in the 2016 presidential election.

In the November 2013 municipal general election, which first pitted current mayoral contestants incumbent Mayor Toni Harp and former East Rock/Cedar Hill Alder Justin Elicker against each other, the ward ranked number two in registered voters (2,899) and number 11 in votes cast (744). Despite losing the overall race by nearly 2,000 votes, Elicker won the Ward 7 vote that year 512 to 225.

In the November 2014 federal congressional and statewide election, the first election with the new redistricted local lines, the ward ranked first in registered voters (4,528) and second in votes cast (1,603).

And in the November 2016 presidential election, the ward again ranked first in registered voters (5,675) and as well as in voter turnout (2.780).

As of Thursday, the ward has 2,617 registered voters. That’s the second highest number in the city, after Westville Ward 25’s 2,662 registered voters.

Sixty-seven percent of Ward 7 registered voters are Democrats, 27 percent are unaffiliated, 4 percent are Republicans, and less than 2 percent belong to a third party.

Who’s New?

A close look at address-level voter turnout data from the most recent election, the November 2018 federal congressional and statewide general contest, shows the impact SoHu and the new downtown apartment complexes have on the ward.

SoHu, an area of largely single-family, two-family, and three-family homes bounded by Trumbull Street, Whitney Avenue, Humphrey Street, and State Street, housed 729 registered voters last November. That was 18 percent of the entire ward’s registration count last election.

The neighborhood saw 506 of those voters cast a ballot at the polls that November. That was 23 percent of the ward’s total voter turnout.

The new downtown apartment complexes provided smaller, though still substantial, boosts in both registered voters and votes cast.

The 360 State St. tower housed 200 registered votes last general election, 93 of whom voted. The 200 College St. College & Crown complex housed 67 registered voters, 41 of whom voted.

A recent visit to 360 State provided a snapshot of why these types of new apartment complexes may not prove to be as much of an electoral drivers as they might at first appear.

This reporter spoke with five different tenants on their way in and out of the building. All five had been living at the tower for three years or less. All were affiliated with Yale in some way, with four being graduate students and one an employee at the Yale School of Medicine. And all were registered to vote in other states, or countries. One was from Maryland, one from India, one from Poland, and two from China.

Other Hot Spots

In addition to all these new voters, Ward 7 continues to have a solid electoral foundation in a primarily affordable housing complex in Ninth Square, and a public housing complex at Orange Street and Audubon.

The Ninth Square Residences at 44 and 66 Orange St. housed over 5 percent (222) of the ward’s registered voters last election, nearly 6 percent (122) of its actual votes cast.

And the public-housing Charles McQueeney Towers at 358 Orange St. housed over 2 percent (101) of the ward’s registered voters last election, and 2 percent (43) of the ward’s total votes.

Across the train tracks, one of the few Wooster Square addresses in the ward is the Strouse Adler apartment complex at 78 Olive St., which had 96 registered voters during the November 2018 general election, and saw 59 of those voters actually cast their ballots at the polls.

Ward 7 Strategies For 2019

To Jason Bartlett, the campaign chairman for Mayor Harp’s re-election bid, the surge in registered voters at the heart of the city is a testament to the economic development and New Urbanism successes of the administration to date.

“I think that we want to let both new and old downtown residents know how much the mayor has energized downtown by simple things like making sure that there’s something happening on the Green every weekend in the summer,” he said, ​“to taking on intractable development issues like the College Street Music Hall, being a supporter of the arts, and really working with the biotech industry to make New Haven the center of biotech and bioscience in the state.”

He said that people are moving to and staying in downtown because of the walkability of the neighborhood, its proximity to mass transit, the flourishing of local restaurants and cultural venues, and the growth of local health and tech jobs.

“I don’t think the mayor gets enough credit for all the different improvements in downtown” that have happened during her time in office, he said.

Elicker, meanwhile, who is challenging Harp for the Democratic nomination for mayor in the September primary, stressed that his campaign is focused on a ​“30-ward strategy” that recognizes the different attributes of every part of the city but also understands that ​“the overwhelming majority of people in the city share the same ideals of how government should work.”

He said that the Harp administration has concentrated too much of its development efforts attracting investment downtown to the detriment of neighborhoods.

“I think it’s important from a leadership perspective and an ethical perspective not to prioritize one ward over others,” he said. ​“Period.”