Connecticut stayed blue in the 2024 election, but state Democrats worry about a continued decline of turnout in the cities. Is the problem with the Democrats their policies? WSHU’s Ebong Udoma spoke with CT Mirror’s Mark Pazniokas to discuss his article, “CT Democrats ask: In 2024 election, where was the city turnout?” as part of the collaborative podcast Long Story Short. You can read his story here. WSHU: Connecticut Democrats control all the statewide elected offices and the state’s entire congressional delegation. So why the concern? MP: You know, you’re right. The Democrats are the dominant party, but there are signs of trouble in what traditionally has been an important part of their coalition, which is the urban vote. There was a sharp drop off in the number of votes for Kamala Harris in the cities compared to the votes that Joe Biden got in 2020. 2020 is an unusual year because of the mass mailing of absentee ballot applications, so the turnout was especially high that year. But there’s a broader perspective which is the same thing is evident in the votes for governor from 2018 to 2022. A wide margin reelected Ned Lamont after winning election in 2018 with 49.5% of the vote. You know, there were five candidates, so that’s how you could win with less than 50%. But his victory two years ago was a suburban victory. Again, the city vote was way, way down. So there is concern. What does that mean? Has the party lost touch? Is it about the machinery, about the infrastructure, about the care and feeding of a urban organization? When you’re talking about places, where, you know, there are poverty issues, education issues. These are places that traditionally the turnout in election time tends to be a little bit lower or sometimes a lot lower. So the question is, what have, what have the, the Democrats failed to do in several election cycles now. WSHU: I covered the problems with voting in Bridgeport and it seemed that, a lot of the voters in Bridgeport are disillusioned with the whole process because of a perception that it might be corrupt. Do you think that has anything to do with it or is it the fact that they feel that the Democrats are not speaking to them? MP: I think it’s a whole bunch of things, and everybody I interviewed about this topic said that was the one common answer — there’s no single thing. There’s something of a national phenomenon, right? The exit polling nationally showed something similar. It wasn’t just the urban vote but the younger vote — either the turnout was less, or Donald Trump got a bigger share than a Republican would normally get in the youth vote. Kamala Harris got 53%. She still won the majority, but just not by the margins that you need that a Democrat needs to win. The same thing happened with the Latino vote. She won it, but not by the margins that a Democrat normally gets. The same is true to a lesser degree with the Black vote. Black voters still went overwhelming for the Democrat. I think it was 81% in Connecticut based on the exit polling that I saw, but some Connecticut Black Democrats are concerned as well. WSHU: And some Connecticut Black Democrats are concerned, as well. You talked with Gary Winfield, who has a city constituency in New Haven, and he seemed to express some concerns. MP: He is one of the Democrats who is at odds with Governor Lamont over the preservation of the so called fiscal guard rails — the volatility cap, the spending cap. And there’s a real debate in the Democratic Party about how strict those limits should be. On Governor Lamont’s side of the argument, Connecticut has a very poor history of fiscal management, very bad reputation in the business community nationally. Because of those fiscal guard rails, the state started generating surpluses, which is something we hadn’t seen in a long time… WSHU: And credit ratings have gone up, right? MP: The credit ratings have gone up, the pension debt has come down. They’ve done some smart things, but it’s quite clear that there are significant unmet needs. The state can afford to do more. And then the question is, is there the right balance on those fiscal guard rails, those limits? And Senator Winfield is one of the ones who is very strong in his opinion, that those have got to change. And he thinks that is one of many factors why the urban voters have kind of turned off. If this administration’s image is fiscal responsibility and you live in a neighborhood where you have a lot of things that you think need to be done, that doesn’t exactly get you out to the polls. WSHU: Whatever the case, the Democrats have to try and figure this out in the next couple of years. MP: It’s becoming a suburban party. I mean, if you look at Governor Lamont’s victory in 2022 — take the shoreline, for example, pretty well to do suburban places. A lot of them had been suburban. He won from Greenwich all the way out to Stonington. Every town except East Haven, which is a real blue collar town that has been tilting Republican, as has been a number of kind of this old blue-collar suburbs. So there is this slow realignment that’s been going on.