Early voting in NYC anemic for Hochul until Clintons, VP Harris arrival

Turnout during the nine days of early voting in overwhelmingly Democratic New York City was light — and experts say the lack of early enthusiasm could portend trouble for incumbent Gov. Kathy Hochul.

Hochul, who was forced to call in the cavalry — Bill and Hillary Clinton and President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris — in a bid to wake up slumbering New York Democrats the past week is in the political fight of her life against surging Republican challenger Lee Zeldin.

A total of 432,634 voters turned out early in the five boroughs even as both public and internal polls have showed a very tight race.

“The lack of enthusiasm for the Hochul campaign is validated by these mediocre [early voting] numbers,” said political consultant Hank Sheinkopf.

“Zeldin has a higher possibility of winning based on these numbers.”

One Democratic strategist said of the turnout, “This race is a jump ball.”

New York City’s cumulative turnout by the seventh day of early voting, Friday, stood at just 33.7% of the early turnout when compared to the presidential election in 2020.

Breaking the alarm glass seems to have worked a little — as turnout across the five boroughs picked up a bit over the weekend.

By the time early voting had ended on Sunday, the turnout had jumped five percentage points — still just 38.6% of the 2020 turnout when 1.19 million people voted early in the fiercely contested 2020 presidential election between President Biden and former President Donald Trump.

Early turnout was dreadful in heavily Democrat The Bronx, where only 39,069 residents voted — just 3,000 more votes than cast in GOP-led Staten Island, which has just about a third of The Bronx’s population.

Brooklyn registered 135,239 votes, followed by Manhattan with 133,618, Queens with 88,840, the Bronx with 39,069 and Staten Island with 35,868.

Zeldin told The Post Monday that turnout and enthusiasm for Hochul is light in many of the city’s Democratic strongholds while he’s generating enthusiastic support.

“It’s a big issue for Hochul, I don’t know if she’s gonna be able to recover from this tomorrow. The turnout in certain areas where she was expecting a higher turnout just wasn’t there,” Zeldin said.

“We’ve seen the enthusiasm gap for awhile — it’s shown themselves in different respects. While she was rallying a few days ago with Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, we had 10 times as many people showing up at a rally in the capital region. There’s clearly a big energy gap and enthusiasm gap between the two campaigns.

“She just didn’t get the numbers that she needed from some of these boroughs. There are certain groups inside of the boroughs that just didn’t show up. And we’re not seeing anything today that is lighting a fuse amongst those people who had just not shown up.”

State Conservative Party chairman Jerry Kassar said that by contrast, the early voter turnout rate was stronger in Zeldin’s base in Long Island’s Nassau and Suffolk counties than in Democratic-leaning New York City where Hochul needs to run up the score.

But State Democratic Party chairman Jay Jacobs, a key Hochul adviser, insisted the turnout was good for Hochul and the Democratic ticket.

Jacobs said New York City typically accounts for about a third of the vote in statewide elections. He said it was at 27% of the early vote total and was hopeful to at least hit that mark during the final vote on Tuesday.

“We feel very good. We’ll see what happens when the polls close on Tuesday,” Jacobs said.

Sources said government workers and black voters historically tend to vote on Election Day, which could boost the turnout for Hochul. But many Republican-leaning voters also prefer to vote on Election Day.

Hochul and the Democratic ticket do have a big advantage when it comes to absentee ballots, a Post review of state and city election data reveals.

The state Board of Elections reported that 62% or 349,087 of the 564,318 absentee ballots requested by voters statewide were from registered Democrats. Only 20% or 111,744 were requested by Republicans and 17% or 96,288 were requested by independents.

Of the 327,886 absentee ballots returned thus far, 200,243 were from Democrats, 72,495 from Republicans and 50,604 from independents.

The overwhelming number of absentee ballots requested in New York City were from Democrats — 171,188 of 219,228.

Thus far, 83,582 of the 102,923 paper ballots received by the local elections board were from Democrats.