Friday Fast Fact: How Julia Salazar Won The Election

Despite a swirl of controversy surrounding her campaign, Julia Salazar, who won 58.5 percent of votes, handily defeated sixteen-year incumbent Martin Dilan in last week’s election.

A map of early polling results on election night, mapped by Steven Romalewski, a researcher at the Center for Urban Research at the City University of New York Graduate Center, reveals exactly how, and where, Salazar claimed her victory.

Salazar dominated in Greenpoint and East Williamsburg, claiming more than 75 percent of the vote in most of the neighborhoods. In Bushwick, her victory was slightly less pronounced, but still sizeable. In areas closer to East Williamsburg, she carried over 60 percent of the vote. But further East, the distribution of votes was a bit more even, with Dilan and Salazar carried a majority of votes across roughly the same number of blocks.

The only areas that Dilan carried were near Cypress Hills and Highland Park.

These results would suggest that while Salazar, as expected, was able to win votes among newer, white residents, she was also able to win votes from longtime residents. Given the scale of her victory, this is certainly at least partly true.

But, on social media, people are also entertaining another possibility: These results show how much the district has changed and that Salazar may have been able to win because of the gentrification.

The race wasn’t just a big deal for Bushwick and the 18th District. Salazar’s win got plenty of media coverage from national publications, like Vox, the New York Times, and The New Yorker.

Cover art by Tom Hemmerick

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