Why Won’t Morris Park Vote Already?

In the Morris Park section of the northeast Bronx, a yellow canopy of leaves hangs over the tree-lined streets. It’s a mix of modest, detached brick homes – many adorned with elaborate Halloween decorations – and a handful of apartment buildings. There’s also a small commercial strip.

And there's a less obvious feature of these five square blocks: This election district, number 80004, has one of the highest rates of registered non-voters in the city, according to an analysis by WNYC's Data News team.

An election district is the smallest geographic unit used by election administrators and campaign operatives to carve up blocks of voters. The borders of this election district are Neill Avenue on the north and Rhinelander Avenue along the south; then Hering Avenue on the east and Lurting Avenue on the west.

NYC Election District 80004, which has one of the highest rates of registered non-voters in the city.

It’s a squarely middle class neighborhood with a median income, $47,639, where nearly 90 percent of people tend to stay in the same home for over a year, according to data from the 2012 American Community Survey.

The population is 66 percent white, 24 percent Hispanic and less than 10 percent Asian. There is statistically no black populatation in the district. But roughly a third of the voters are registered Republicans.

Four out of every 10 registered voters in this election district haven’t gone to the polls since 2010, according to the data team's analysis of Board of Elections records. That means they’ve missed two federal election cycles.

Not voting has consequences, says Donald Green, who studies voter behavior at Columbia University. "When people do not vote repeatedly in election after election, those voters become marginalized," he said.

As part of our series ‘Just Vote Already,’ WNYC is using the tips and tricks of political operatives for our own campaign: to get people to vote. And you can help. To send a robocall to a non-voting friend, visit the campaign page at the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC.org