Luke Bronin beat out 14-term incumbent John Larson for the Democratic nomination for Connecticut’s 1st Congressional District on Tuesday night — and the margins were not tight, even across different demographic groups in the district.
Bronin received more than 29,600 votes from constituents in the district, an obvious win compared to Larson’s 17,930 votes. This trend held steady in most towns, regardless of its race, income and age makeup, a factor that may have given Bronin, 47, the edge over Larson, 78.
Bronin received more than 50% of the vote in all but four towns: Hartland, East Hartford, Colebrook and Manchester. Larson received more than 50% of the vote in Hartland from only 57 voters, according to data from the Office of the Secretary of the State.
While Larson’s age was a topic of discussion, resident age appears to have had little impact on the results of the race.
Larson did perform best in towns where only 15% or less of the population is young adult residents, and he performed worse in towns with 25% or more young adult residents. But the difference was small — Larson had an edge of just 1.9 percentage points in towns with older populations.
Regardless of age, Bronin consistently received support from more than 50% of voters. His support was more impacted by the fluctuation of votes cast for Gilchrest, who received as much as 10% of the vote and as little as 6.6% among towns with different age populations.
There was also widespread support for Bronin across towns with different racial makeups in the district. Majority-minority towns — Bloomfield, East Hartford, Hartford and Windsor — showed higher rates of support for Bronin than majority-white towns, but he still came out with more than 50% of votes from both groups.
Across all candidates, support for Gilchrest changed the most based on a town’s racial makeup. She saw more support from majority-white towns — taking nearly 10% of the vote compared to 4.5% in majority-minority towns.
Larson, like Bronin, performed slightly worse in majority-white towns.
Compared to race and age, a town’s household income had a larger — but still insignificant — impact in the district’s primary.
Bronin received a high percentage of votes from towns with more middle-class households that made between $45,000 and $75,000 in the past 12 months. Larson only received 30.1% of the votes from towns in this demographic group.
Gilchrest performed better in higher-earning towns. She took 11.2% of the vote in towns where household income in the past 12 months was more than $200,000.
