Rochester, NY · the strongest Democratic and Republican presidential performances recorded here, measured three ways.
1892–2024 · 34 presidential cycles
Highest vote share
Largest share of the presidential candidate vote cast here.
Democratic
Lyndon B. Johnson1964
70.0%
262,341 votes · D+40.0
Runner-up · Barack Obama, 2008 · 55.1%
Republican
Dwight D. Eisenhower1956
69.4%
252,437 votes · R+38.8
Runner-up · Warren G. Harding, 1920 · 66.0%
Most votes
Largest number of votes cast for the party’s presidential nominee here.
Democratic
Joe Biden2020
288,647votes
54.9% of the vote · D+12.1
Runner-up · Kamala Harris, 2024 · 277,882 votes
Republican
Richard Nixon1972
266,311votes
64.1% of the vote · R+28.4
Runner-up · Ronald Reagan, 1984 · 254,130 votes
Best relative to the U.S.
This Place’s margin against the national margin in the same election — positive when it leaned toward the party more than the country did.
Democratic
Lyndon B. Johnson1964
+17.4pts D vs U.S.
Place D+40.0 · U.S. D+22.6
Runner-up · Kamala Harris, 2024 · +11.2 pts
Republican
Herbert Hoover1932
+31.3pts R vs U.S.
Place R+13.5 · U.S. D+17.8
Runner-up · Charles E. Hughes, 1916 · +27.6 pts
presidential primaries
Nominating contests
Rochester, NY · how this place’s counties split between candidates in each party’s presidential nominating contest, cycle by cycle. A primary is a contest inside one party, so it has no Democratic–Republican margin and is not part of the general-election record above.
Akashic reports votes cast, not delegates awarded. The two can disagree: Clinton led the 2008 national primary popular vote by less than half a point and did not win the nomination.
Primary returns are published at county grain and there is no roll-up above it. Each cell counts how many of this place’s counties a candidate led — a count of records, not a vote total. Who led the place as a whole is not knowable from these returns, because county rows carry a leader and a lead but no per-candidate votes.
Presidential nominating contests in Rochester, NY, by party and cycle.
○no contest record — Akashic holds no result for that party and cycle here. It is not a claim that no contest was held. Telling apart a contest that was cancelled, one that went uncontested, and one simply not yet ingested needs a nominating-contest calendar, which is a separate ingest from results and does not exist yet.
Republican presidential primaries are not yet ingested — the Republican series runs from 1856 and is in scope. The row is kept so its absence is visible: a Democratic-only panel would otherwise read as though no one else held a contest.
Akashic carries 10 states for 2012 and 3 states for 2024. Cycles in which an incumbent president seeks renomination are thin by nature — few states run a contested primary — so a sparse column is politics, not a hole in the record.
County returns carry a leader and a lead over the runner-up, and nothing more. The full candidate field with vote shares is published at state grain — follow a cycle above to the state contest for it.
voter registration
Registered voters
By party of registration, over time
Party registration · 2026D+7.5
vs
Presidential vote · 2024D+9.7
Registration and the presidential vote track closely here — within 2.2 points.
Domestic migration in Rochester, NY in Rochester, NY: net domestic migration by year
Year
Net domestic migration
2011
−2,860
2012
−4,212
2013
−3,977
2014
−5,840
2015
−6,903
2016
−7,125
2017
−5,168
2018
−3,702
2019
−3,556
2021
−4,193
2022
−5,808
2023
−4,412
2024
−573
2025
−540
Rochester's media market anchors Monroe County, a bellwether that has tracked closely with statewide margins while its urban core and outer-ring suburbs increasingly diverge in turnout patterns and party preference.
Across the recorded series it reached a Democratic high of 40.0 points in 1964 and a Republican high of 41.1 points in 1920. Between 2020 and 2024 the market moved 2.4 points toward the Republican candidate; the 2024 margin was 9.7 points.
A population of 1,043,331, a 73% non-Hispanic-white share, and a median household income of $76,563 describe the market. The market's voting pattern over the last decade is most similar to that of Syracuse and Albany-Schenectady-Troy.
Akashic
Political twins — media markets
The media markets whose fingerprint — 2000–2024 trajectory, demographics, ancestry, religion — sits closest to this one, and why.
Twin score (0–100) = weighted cosine between tier-standardized fingerprints: presidential margins 2000–2024 with 12-yr trend and elasticity, ACS income, age, education, population and race, top reported ancestries, and religious adherence — chips name the closest-shared dimensions and the widest gap. Re-weight the groups in the twins explorer.
Compare two places, side by side
Twelve curated comparisons line up election history, demographics, and the divergence story for two places at a glance. Browse all comparisons →
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All citations released under CC BY 4.0. Attribution: Akashic Intelligence.
Rochester, NY, New York. Akashic. https://akashic.app/dma/538/. Accessed May 20, 2026. License: CC BY 4.0.
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In 2024, Rochester, NY, New York voted Democratic by 9.7 points (D+9.7), carried by the Democratic candidate. Out of 508,722 votes cast, 277,882 went Democratic and 228,325 went Republican.
When did Rochester, NY, New York last vote Republican?
The most recent presidential election in which Rochester, NY, New York voted Republican was 2004.
How many people live in Rochester, NY, New York?
Rochester, NY, New York has a population of 1,043,331 according to the 2024 American Community Survey 5-year estimates from the US Census Bureau.
What is the median household income in Rochester, NY, New York?
Median household income in Rochester, NY, New York is $76,563 — below the national median of $80,734. The New York state median is $85,974.
What is the political history of Rochester, NY, New York?
Akashic tracks 34 presidential elections in Rochester, NY, New York from 1892 to 2024. Of those, 9 went Democratic and 25 went Republican.
