Buffalo, NY (WBEN) Just a few days into early voting, about a fourth of the 23,000 who voted in the Buffalo mayoral primary in June have already cast ballots in the November race.
Political experts WBEN reached out to who are mulling those numbers aren't particularly impressed by the early voting numbers so far.
Ken Kruly of Politics and Stuff is among those not impressed. "The numbers are not overwhelming," says Kruly. "There are 156,000 registered voters in the city of Buffalo. The numbers you're talking about represent a small fraction of that."
Kruly says there are still a few days of early voting plus Election Day left. "I don't think the turnout is going to indicate whether one is doing better than the other until we get numbers from council districts," explains Kruly. He believes the race between Byron Brown and India Walton is still a toss-up. "They both have large organizations capable of producing votes. The mayor's organization didn't come out to do anything particularly in the primary and that's why we're here today," says Kruly. He says it's still likely going to be a close result.
Republican strategist Carl Calabrese says the numbers aren't so high in his mind either. "I thought it would be higher given the interest in this race, and given the fact that early voting has become part of the process, but it's tough to say who benefits because we don't know what efforts both campaigns have put into communicating with likely voters into voting early," says Calabrese. "If they didn't, both campaigns should have had an effort to identify early voters and made sure they sent the right messages and the strongest messages before they went out and cast the early ballot."
Calabrese says 33-35% of the Democratic party is hard left, which is Walton's constituency. "She's got to supercharge that turnout, and she's got to hope the Brown constituents have a low turnout, like they did on primary night," explains Calabrese.
"If Brown hopes to win this, he has to go back to the old Byron Brown, hands on guy with motivated volunteers getting the vote out and polling places staffed from 6am to 9pm, handing out rubber stamps."
Calabrese says the only poll in the race was out a few weeks ago, with Brown leading by 10 percent. "The problem is that poll did not measure the tailoff because of the write-in," says Calabrese.
Walton defeated Brown in the primary in June. Election Day is Tuesday.
