By Marie Horrigan, CQ Staff

CQ Politics Presidential Race Rating: Safe Democratic

Electoral Votes: 31

New York will be a solid indicator of just how eager Hillary Rodham Clinton ’s supporters will be to set aside their grievances about the bruising nominating contest and rally behind Barack Obama . And anguish over Clinton’s setback ran high among supporters in her adopted state, particularly among women in the New York metropolitan area. (She won the Feb. 5 primary by 17 percentage points.) But if Obama can make it a big margin of victory there — to paraphrase the Sinatra standard — then maybe he can make it anywhere.

John McCain isn’t going to come close to securing the 31 electoral votes assigned to the third most-populous state; New York’s standing as a Democratic stronghold is too solid for that. Republicans who are settling for small favors can at least be thankful Obama’s margin of victory might be a bit smaller than if the Democratic nominee were Clinton, who’s finishing her eighth year as senator for her adopted state.

Obama is on his way to bringing the Democrats’ presidential winning streak in the state to six. New York gave George W. Bush two of his worst showings. He lost it by 25 percentage points in 2000 and by 18 points four years later — even after accepting his renomination in Madison Square Garden. McCain did win the state’s GOP primary decisively, but there was a huge mismatch in turnout; three times as many people, about 1.9 million, voted in the Democratic contest. That means Obama, even as the distant runner-up to Clinton, received more than twice the votes McCain got the same day. “Color it blue and throw away the crayon,” Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, says of the state.

Beyond the Democrats’ upper hand in presidential politics, the state has a powerhouse Democratic Senate tandem of Clinton and Charles E. Schumer , who unseated Alfonse M. D’Amato in 1998 and now chairs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Democrat Eliot Spitzer ’s 2006 win to succeed George E. Pataki, who retired as governor after three terms, cost the Republicans their only foothold in statewide office; though Spitzer’s career was abruptly ended by a sex scandal this year, the elevation of David A. Paterson from lieutenant governor kept the seat Democratic. The long GOP domination of the state Senate, abetted by a series of incumbent-protective redistrictings, dwindled to 31-30 this summer with the unexpected resignation of Joseph Bruno, who had served as Republican leader for 14 years.

But perhaps the most stunning evidence of the shift can be found in the congressional delegation: Democrats hold 23 of the 29 seats, and they have a serious shot at increasing their dominance to 27 House seats come November.

Republicans were hoping to reverse the trend by contesting the three House seats they lost last time — all of them territory Bush carried when he won re-election. But they only were able to recruit a top-tier candidate for one of the races: former state GOP chairman Sandy Treadwell, who is challenging Kirsten Gillibrand in the upper Hudson Valley’s 20th District she took from John E. Sweeney in 2006. CQ Politics rates this race Leans Democratic.

The GOP had to settle for little-known and underfinanced Iraq War veteran Kieran Michael Lalor as the challenger to John Hall , the former rock musician who unseated Sue W. Kelly in the lower Hudson Valley in 2006. And wealthy businessman Richard L. Hanna appears to have gotten into the race too late to threaten Michael Arcuri , who won the sprawling upstate seat left open in 2006 by Sherwood Boehlert. CQ Politics rates both those races Democrat Favored.

At the same time, the GOP is playing defense in four districts. In the Southern Tier, John R. “Randy” Kuhl will be struggling to win a third term against former Navy commander Eric Massa, who came within 6,000 votes last time. CQ Politics race rating: Leans Republican.

The other three are districts which Republicans are leaving open: Upstate veterans James T. Walsh and Thomas M. Reynolds and Vito J. Fossella on Staten Island.

Nowhere have things gone more bizarrely wrong for GOP than in the district Fossella decided to relinquish in May after admitting to a daughter from an extramarital relationship. After the party failed to coax any well-known officeholder into the race, its fallback candidate, retired Wall Street executive Frank Powers, died. The second fallback, former state Rep. Robert Straniere, is disliked by GOP officials in Brooklyn, home to a quarter of the electorate. The Democratic establishment, meanwhile, has united behind City Councilman Michael McMahon. As the GOP has struggled, CQ Politics has changed its rating from the Safe Republican category to, now, Democrat Favored.

Republicans also strained to find candidates for the other two open seats. In the 25th District centered on Syracuse, former Democratic congressional aide Dan Maffei, who lost by fewer than 4,000 votes last time, faces a former county party chairman, Dale Sweetland, who secured support from district Republican officials only in May. CQ Politics race rating: Leans Democratic.