Webinar recap: A deeper dive into New York City's ranked choice voting election

Rachel Hutchinson, Will Mantell | 

Last week, FairVote hosted a webinar on the 2025 New York City ranked choice voting primaries, featuring on-the-ground insights from Susan Lerner of Common Cause New York, and new analysis of ballot and polling data from FairVote’s research team.

During the webinar, Lerner discussed how ranked choice voting (RCV) impacted candidate campaigns – with several candidates cross-endorsing a competitor, or otherwise running more collaborative and positive campaigns. This is possible because RCV elections are not zero-sum; a voter can rank one candidate first and their competitor second.

The candidates took advantage of the various benefits of ranked choice voting and learned how to run in a ranked choice voting election. And I think what we’ve seen, and what the goal is, is to try and limit divisive politics and create a new atmosphere of coalition politics. And I think the 2025 New York City primary really shows that that is an achievable goal with a ranked choice voting election.

Lerner also discussed the impact of candidate and voter education efforts, which are led by Common Cause New York and include a broad range of organizations across the city’s five boroughs and many cultural communities. 

Voter turnout crossed 1 million for the first time since 1989, driven by increases in young voters coming out to vote. Turnout was the second-highest ever for a New York City primary. Additionally, 96% of voters said RCV was simple in a post-election SurveyUSA poll, and 78% of voters ranked two or more candidates in the Democratic mayoral primary. 

Lerner said these data points were a testament to education efforts, and suggest a model for other cities and states across the country that adopt election reform.

We’re seeing broad-based community support – a coalition of over 50 community-based organizations working day in and day out in different languages with cultural competency to explain RCV to their voters. And I think the high level of voter satisfaction and the solid turnout numbers show that the effort is paying off.

The FairVote research team also discussed detailed findings from the cast vote record – an anonymized record of all ballots cast. The cast vote record in an RCV election offers campaigns, election analysts, and good-government groups detailed information about voters’ preferences and their engagement with the ballot.

In addition to showing how many voters ranked multiple candidates (78%), the cast vote record shows exactly how voters responded to candidate and campaign cues – for example, the number of Brad Lander voters who ranked Zohran Mamdani second (and vice versa) following the pair’s cross-endorsement in the Democratic mayoral primary. Overall, there was significant crossover support between candidates who cross-endorsed or were endorsed as part of an organization’s recommended slate of candidates. 

Additionally, 80% of voters ranked one of the two frontrunners – Mamdani and Andrew Cuomo – as their first choice in the mayoral primary. But 95% of voters were able to express a preference between Mamdani and Cuomo because of RCV – meaning that RCV led to 159,619 more New Yorkers deciding the winner of that race. 

Across all contests that went to an RCV count, the average increase in votes counting for finalist candidates was 26%. This represents 243,808 votes that were initially cast for a non-frontrunner, but ultimately counted toward one of the top two candidates. 

As FairVote Senior Policy Analyst Rachel Hutchinson shared:

The big themes that emerged from the data were that voters take advantage of the opportunity to rank, they respond to cues from their favorite candidates and factors like the competitiveness of the race, and that RCV helped more voters weigh in between top choices.

Additional resources and information on New York City’s 2025 RCV elections include: 

FairVote will provide additional analysis in the weeks and months to come. 

To learn more about the local organizations supporting RCV in NYC, visit Common Cause/NY and Rank the Vote NYC .