You be the Jury  by Tom Reynolds

On TV, the crime story usually ends with no doubt as to who committed the crime.  In real life, it’s circumstantial evidence that convicts a criminal. 

I applied that same theory to testing the impact that gun owners might have on gubernatorial elections in New York State.  I used the last 3 NYS Governor’s elections to test if the pro-gun Republican could have won if gun owners turned out to vote under various scenarios.  There are knowns and there are unknowns so we fill the gaps with circumstantial evidence.  I don’t want to bury you in statistics so I’ll explain as simply as possible.

We know Democrat governor candidates were anti-gun and the Republican governor candidates were pro-gun. 

We know what New York State’s population was and how many people were at least 18 years old and, thus, potentially eligible to vote.

We know how many people were registered active voters in NYS.

We know how many votes were cast in the last three governor’s elections and what percentage of active registered voters actually voted.

We know how many votes the Republican candidate got and by how much they lost the election.

If we mix knowns and unknowns together in possible scenarios, we can get a better idea of whether gun owners voting makes a difference.    

These are the estimates of unknowns that I used: 

Estimates of NYS gun owners range between 5 million to 3 million and, by law, they must be 18 or older, so they could potentially vote.  I ran 5 scenarios using between 5 million and 3 million in each of the three elections.

67% of those eligible to vote in NYS are active registered voters. All scenarios projected what would have happened if 67% of the gun owners who are eligible to vote would be registered to vote.*

I ran five scenarios where the Republican got between 60% and 80% of the gun owners votes in each election. **

I ran five scenarios with gun owners making up from 50% to 30% of the Republican candidate’s actual votes in each election.***

I ran five voter participation scenarios where between 50% and 30% of gun owners who are registered to vote actually voted.**** 

What were the results when the above are mixed together?  Of 25 possible scenarios in each election:

In 2022, the pro Republican won 20 times and came close 1 other time.

In 2018, The Republican won 2 times and came close 2 other times.

In 2014, the Republican won 21 times and came close 2 other times.

There’s an 80% chance that the Republican, pro-gun candidate would have won two of the last three elections - if gun owners had turned out to vote.

*We know that about 67% of those eligible to vote in NYS are active registered voters.  There are 5 million to 3 million gun owners and if 67% of them registered to vote that would be 3.35 million to 2 million voters.  

** I assumed that gun owners are more likely to vote Republican – for reasons beyond just gun ownership - but no one knows what percentage of the gun owners’ votes actually go to Republicans. Less than 60% won’t make a difference and more than 80% seems too high.

*** We know how many gun owner votes the Republican candidate got and it doesn’t seem possible that more than half of them were from gun owners. 

**** The voter participation rates in the last 4 governor’s elections were 49% (2022) 53% (2018) 36% (2014) 44% (2010).  I once saw a study that said between 50% and 30% of hunters vote.