#Trailing Long Island Dems face climb as absentee count set to begin

Three Long Island state Senate Democrats face the steepest climbs to victory as election officials prepare to count the more than 1.5 million absentee ballots returned so far, a Post analysis reveals.

State Sens. Monica Martinez, Jim Gaughran and Kevin Thomas face gaps of at least 15 percentage points between the number of votes they need to win and the number of absentee ballots Democratic voters have returned so far.

“It’s no surprise that Long Island poses a particular challenge for Democrats, that’s always been the case,” said Prof. David Birdsell, the dean of the Baruch College’s Marxe School of Public and International Affairs. “The further you go out on Long Island, the bigger challenge is.”

Republicans hammered the trio of Democratic lawmakers for backing the 2019 budget deal struck by the state’s Democratic leadership that contained New York’s controversial overhaul of its bail laws.

Suffolk County’s Martinez needs to win 84 percent of the roughly 20,000 absentee ballots returned in her district as of Friday to take the lead. But voters with Democratic Party registration accounted for just 46 percent of the mail votes officials have received so far.

Meanwhile, Gaughran needs to win 69 percent of the 36,000 ballots returned as of Friday, but Democratic voters account for 51 percent so far.

Thomas is in a similar boat, needing to win 64 percent of the returned ballots, while Democratic voters account for just 49 percent — a 15 percentage point gap.

Democratic sources argue there is still hope for those lawmakers as thousands of voters without party affiliations also requested and returned mail-in ballots — votes they believe will break heavily their way.

The paper’s number crunch shows that ballots from unaffiliated voters could make all the difference for Brooklyn state Sen. Andrew Gounardes as he seeks to close a 6,000 vote deficit.

Gounardes need to win 74 percent of the 12,744 absentee ballots returned so far in his district to move ahead of GOP challenger Vito Bruno.

But the data shows that registered Democrats account for 65 percent of those votes, leaving just a nine percentage point gap that could be easily closed with ballots from New Yorkers not registered with any party.

The Post conducted its analysis by combining the early and Election Day voting totals with the tallies the absentee ballots returned for each Senate district as of Friday.

“This is simple arithmetic and it underscores that there’s nothing strange about having votes to tally, or that those votes may skew in a particular direction,” added Birdsell.

He said that Democrats historically have leaned towards voting by mail when possible and that President Trump’s repeated attacks on absentee balloting discouraged Republicans from voting absentee, exacerbating the long-standing skew.

Officials say the number of returned ballots will likely increase over the next few days, too. Under New York state election law, ballots postmarked by Election Day have until November 10 to arrive at the local Board of Elections for tallying.

The New York City Board of Elections plans to begin the process of counting the mail votes on Monday.

State Republicans told The Post they are confident they can hang onto their early leads despite the outstanding and likely heavily Democratic votes on absentee ballots.

“The Senate Republican Conference had an amazing night on Tuesday,” said spokeswoman Candice Giove. “We expect all of our candidates’ leads to hold and for our conference to grow.”

Senate Democrats fired back, saying they believed the outstanding votes would propel them to victory.

“There are over a million ballots still to be counted in competitive races and these ballots skew HEAVILY Democratic,” said spokesman Mike Murphy. “While Republicans shunned and discouraged early and absentee voting, Democrats supported and encouraged it and therefore have outperformed Republicans overwhelmingly.”