Once again, ranked choice voting improved New York City elections
Yesterday, New York City used ranked choice voting (RCV) in its primary elections for the third time – picking nominees for mayor, City Council, and other offices. Because of RCV, voters got more choice and more competition, and the city will get majority nominees without costly, low-turnout runoffs in July. Turnout was the highest for a mayoral race since 1989, and the city is poised to maintain its majority-women City Council, first elected with RCV.
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A different kind of mayoral campaign
In the Democratic primary for mayor, first-choice results show State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani leading with 43.5%, followed by former Governor Andrew Cuomo with 36.4%. Mamdani has declared victory and Cuomo has conceded – Mamdani is nearly certain to win a majority of votes in the RCV count, since pre-election polls showed he is the most popular backup choice for supporters of Brad Lander, the third-place candidate.
| Candidate | Share of votes |
| Zohran Mamdani | 43.5% |
| Andrew M. Cuomo | 36.4% |
| Brad Lander | 11.3% |
| Adrienne Adams | 4.1% |
| Scott M. Stringer | 1.6% |
| Zellnor Myrie | 1.0% |
| Whitney Tilson | 0.8% |
| Michael Blake | 0.4% |
| Jessica Ramos | 0.4% |
| Paperboy Love Prince | 0.1% |
| Selma Bartholomew | 0.1% |
Though the outcome may not have been changed by RCV, the campaign certainly was. Mamdani and Lander “cross-endorsed” each other earlier this month – a campaign style that Mamdani called “the politics of the future” as he stood on stage with Lander at his victory party last night. Lander shared more thoughts about the cross-endorsement in this video:
Candidates spent the final days criss-crossing the city together and campaigning alongside one another. Organizations and media outlets made ranked endorsements, offering more information on their preferences to voters – and modeling how to use the ranked choice ballot.
We even saw candidates raise funds for one another, do joint social media posts together, walk arm-in-arm, and talk about how their “opponents” could also help the city.
Elections for New York City Council
The race for mayor wasn’t the only notable election yesterday. At time of writing, it appears Democratic primary elections for New York City Council will go to RCV tabulation in 10 districts, including all three races we highlighted in our pre-election analysis.
Close races include Districts 2 and 4 in Manhattan; District 8 in Manhattan and the Bronx; District 13 in the Bronx; and Districts 21, 28, and 30 and Queens. All of these races had four or more candidates – except District 30, which had three. Once again, New York voters had more choice without worrying about wasting their vote.
Unofficial RCV results will be released on July 1. The timeline is set by the New York City Board of Elections – which chooses to wait until all absentee ballots are received before running its RCV count. Nationally, the best practice is to report preliminary RCV results as soon as possible, and most cities report preliminary RCV results within 24 hours. The actual tabulation takes just seconds.
Even before RCV tabulations, one thing is clear: New York’s City Council is poised to be majority-women. In New York’s first use of RCV, voters elected the city’s first-ever majority-women City Council – and they are likely to do it again this year. This is just the latest in a string of evidence showing women candidates tend to do better in ranked choice voting elections.
High turnout & little drama at the polls
In its first use of RCV in 2021, New York City saw its highest turnout since 1989 – and turnout went even higher yesterday. Based on current estimates of votes left to count, the city’s raw vote total could exceed 1 million.
New York City Democratic primary turnout, 1989-2025
While the number of registered voters in New York City has risen sharply over recent decades, the population eligible to vote in primaries has been relatively constant, which is why this chart focuses on the relative number of primary voters.
While RCV is just one factor in turnout, recent research has suggested that municipal elections using RCV see 17% higher turnout and that RCV may have the strongest positive impact on youth turnout. Aligned to these research findings, nearly 25% of New York City’s early voters were first-time voters, with voters between 25 and 34 making up the largest share of all early voters.
Despite the high turnout, voting appears to have gone smoothly across the city. Aside from reports of temporary power outages and high temperatures at some polling places due to an ongoing heat wave, there weren’t any serious technical issues.
Many voters also expressed a strong understanding of RCV and an eagerness to express their honest opinions of the candidates. Several shared their rankings and the motivations behind them with the New York Times:
I was not quite ready to make a final, final decision, so it was nice to be able to put some of my options down because I think there were some good people.
– Alison Delegete, from Astoria, Queens, who ranked Cuomo, Mamdani, Adrienne Adams, Scott Stringer, and Brad Lander.
I was really looking for some type of hope. Right now, I don’t have hope with the Congress, politics and anything like that. And then there’s actually one candidate that was like, OK, there’s a possibility he might do something.
– Sofia Ruiz of Woodside, Queens, who ranked Mamdani first, and also ranked Lander, Scott Stringer, Jessica Ramos, and Adrienne Adams.
They’re progressive enough, but they seem to have a way to pay for a lot of the stuff they were talking about.
– Amy Anderson, from Brooklyn Heights, speaking of Brad Lander and Adrienne Adams, her top two choices. She said her goal was to use ranked choice voting to pick candidates whom she believed occupy a happy medium between progressive and pragmatic.
