Why these voters, and why now
Property taxes are the biggest cost-of-living pressure for 87,711 voters in New York's 17th Congressional District. That's 17 percent of the district's voters, against six percent of voters across New York.
These voters make up one PharosGraph audience, Cost of Living Driven by Property Taxes. PharosGraph looks at five costs for every registered voter (housing, property taxes, healthcare, childcare, and gas and utilities) and places each voter in the audience for the one that weighs most on them. Housing costs still lead in the district, for 44 percent of voters, though that's below the 55 percent statewide. Property taxes run the other way, at close to three times the state rate.
The cost of living has ranked first among the issues in PharosGraph's weekly read of the contest between Mike Lawler and Cait Conley in 12 of the 14 weekly runs since early July, and second in the other two. The state and local tax deduction, which sets how much of a property tax bill a homeowner can take off a federal return, is a ranked issue in only seven of the races PharosGraph tracks across the country, and five of the seven are in New York. In the 17th District it ranked seventh on October 1 and hasn't fallen below eighth since July.
More than half of the district's 87,711 property tax voters, 54 percent, are in at least one of the race's two Persuade audiences, which hold the voters PharosGraph ranks as most movable for each candidate. Across the district the figure is 45 percent. In the Westchester County part of the district it reaches 60 percent, and 14,946 of the 87,711 are in both candidates' Persuade audiences. Being in play describes how movable a voter is. It doesn't mean a voter is undecided, and it doesn't predict a vote.
Every voter in the audience is a homeowner, and nine in ten live in a single-family home. Their average age is 66, against 51 for the district. They also vote. In 2024, 88 percent of them turned out, against 74 percent of the district's voters, so the work with them is persuasion more than turnout. The Westchester part of the district holds the most of them, 42,256, followed by Rockland County with 27,873, Putnam County with 12,464 and the Dutchess part with 5,118.
Mike Lawler and Cait Conley meet for their second debate on October 14 on PIX11. Early voting opens October 24, the same day registration closes. PharosGraph rescores every registered voter in the country each week and refreshes the audiences each month, so a campaign activating now gets this fall's voters and not a list built in the spring. The property tax audience, the Persuade and GOTV audiences for this race and the four other cost-of-living audiences are all available through L2, in LiveRamp and in L2 DataMapping. A campaign or group with a message on property taxes or the deduction can put it in front of these voters before the first ballots are cast.