Voters in the largest city in America are choosing a Democratic nominee for mayor via ranked-choice voting. The crowded field is led by former governor Andrew Cuomo, who resigned from the state’s top office four years ago following sexual harassment allegations; state Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, who snagged key endorsements from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York); Comptroller Brad Lander, who made headlines when he was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement at an immigration hearing last week; and City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams.
This is a ranked-choice primary – only first-choice votes will be tabulated on election night. Final vote calculations will be released July 1 and updated weekly until all ballots are counted. Republican Curtis Sliwa is uncontested in his primary.
Can somebody please explain to me how this works? Because I've read that the "final" vote isn't until November - so what the hell is this?
This is the Democratic primary race. It’s ranked-choice, final results for this vote will be out on July 1st, but Mamdani is expected to gain over Cuomo from 2nd-ranks if anything, and Cuomo already conceded the primary to him. This is considered the Big Thing because most NYC residents are dems and so the dem primary is basically the mayoral race. That might be different this year as the (widely disliked) incumbent and Cuomo will be running as independents in the general mayoral election in November, and we might see a centrist bloc coalesce, but I wouldn’t underestimate the power of the (D) appearing by Mamdani’s name.
Edit: the general in November is not ranked-choice, so the centrist/conservative vote will be split 3-way. I’d be very surprised if Mamdani lost
Is it likely for the Republican candidate to just drop out?
I don’t think the repubs would want to make a show out of helping Cuomo/Adams to defeat Mamdani. Especially when they’re trying to attack every democrat by tying them to him. As far as they’re concerned, every democrat is a socialist, and Mamdani only proves it. I’m sure the nyc bourgeoisie would prefer a united front against him but I think the democrat and republican parties both know it’d make them look bad.
I mean, if I was a billionaire in New York, I know I would be pulling every string I could find to get Adams and the Republican candidate to drop out because this is an existential threat. The bourgeoisie showed that they were capable of doing that to stop Bernie in 2016 and 2020, why not now?
Bernie was a much larger threat, and it was internal to the Democratic Party. Stopping Mamdani here would require obvious inter-party collusion against him, which would hurt both national parties in the long run, over an admittedly large threat but not a Bernie-level one
I’m excitedly awaiting nyt or the atlantic or whoever to publish an article about how, if only there had been a united moderate front, Mamdani could have been stopped. Just imagine the title: “How Ranked Choice Voting propelled Mamdani’s success— and how it could have foiled his campaign.”