The comments of one New Yorker seemed to tell a large part of the election story this week: “Four years ago when Obama won, it was crazy here,” she said. “Now, not so much.”

Indeed, walking around Manhattan, you could have been forgiven for not knowing there was an election on.

With the East Coast putting itself back together after the worst storm in memory, the posters in the windows of bars and coffee shops were advertising post-Sandy reopening dates, not expressing support for candidates.

But if East Coast residents were not out cheering on the president, neither were they rooting for Mitt Romney.

By and large, people said they were voting because they always voted, rather than because they had been swayed by the arguments.

“Four years ago when Obama won, it was crazy here,” she said. “Now, not so much.”

In the Jewish heartland of Manhattan’s Upper West Side, uncertainty prevailed. “We Jews always vote Democrat,” said one person. “But this year? It’s not so easy.”

While Orthodox Jews were cheering Mr Romney for his social conservatism, one liberal, Jewish graduate of Columbia said she could not vote Republican for the same reasons. But, she admitted, her parents in the Jewish suburb of Westchester were planning to do the opposite. “It’s the economy, mostly,” said one woman. “He’s had four years, and it’s still terrible.”