NYT takes a deep dive into NYC’s ranked-choice ballots to show how Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani beat former Governor Andrew Cuomo. Big takeaway: although voters could list up to five candidates on their ballots, 54% didn’t include Cuomo at all.
Category Archives: primaries
FairVote Analysis of RCV in NYC Mayoral Primary
By Rachel Hutchinson, Bryan Huang, and Deb Otis:
New York City’s third election cycle with ranked choice voting (RCV) had the second-highest turnout in city primary history. Most voters reported that they found RCV simple and wanted to keep or expand it. Now we have the cast vote record, released by the NYC Board of Elections July 24 – an anonymized digital record showing how each ballot ranked the candidates.
FairVote’s initial analysis of the results (before the cast vote record was available) can be found here. . . .
There were 20 contests with three or more candidates across 31 contested Democratic and Republican primary elections. In this blog, we will focus on the Democratic mayoral primary. The cast vote record shows that a supermajority of voters embraced ranking candidates, followed cues from candidates and campaigns, and ultimately had a greater impact on the election results.
Mamdani’s electoral coalition in the primary (a revision)
Justin popping back in. Today, the NYT issued a correction to its story on Mamdani’s impact on the NYC primary electorate, and what I described yesterday as a “staggering” departure from the norm:
A correction was made on June 30, 2025: An earlier version of the chart in this article showing voters by age incorrectly identified the age group with the largest turnout. It was voters aged 30 to 34, not those aged 18 to 24.
Here’s the original chart:
And here’s the update:
To be clear, that turnout by younger voters (both 18-24 and 25-29 year-olds) is still eye-popping, both as a primary-over-primary increase and as an absolute. The 18-24 turnout is just a little less “staggering” than it looked yesterday.
“New York City’s mayoral primary casts bright light on ranked choice voting — and its future nationally”
NBC reports on the big spotlight that ranked-choice voting got on Tuesday, and suggests that the election may provide both proponents and opponents with “fresh data.”
Watching NYC results unfold
My last post yesterday highlighted the patience NYC voters might need, but it looks like the verdict was pretty clear even in the first round of results, and will likely get clearer as the count rolls on.
As the count does progress, even if there’s less nail-biting over the eventual winner, you’ll want to check out the astonishingly great data visualization work of the NYC Election Atlas, brought to you by Steve Romalewski and the Center for Urban Research at the Graduate Center of CUNY. For the 2021 NYC race, they’ve got interactive maps and infographics (go to 2021 RCV results: screenshot below) showing which support came from where in which round.
More coming for 2025, and undoubtedly worth your while. (And puts the ostensibly “most detailed map of the NYC mayoral primary” to shame.)
“Nearly a quarter of NYC’s early voters were new Democratic primary participants”
The Gothamist offers fascinating data on early primary turnout this year. It is not just that early turnout is up; it is radically up. Moreover, the uptick is among voters who, while they may have voted before in general elections, have never voted in a Democratic primary before.
“A total of 385,184 New Yorkers voted early in this primary election, compared to 191,197 in 2021.”
“Nearly 25% of early voters had not voted in a Democratic primary at any point between 2012 and 2024, according to an analysis of voter history by John Mollenkopf, director of the Center for Urban Research at the CUNY Graduate Center. . . .
. . . [In] the 2021 Democratic mayoral primary, . . . 3% of early voters had never voted in a Democratic primary.”
We will obviously have to see if turnout today is high, and no doubt it will still be very low compared to the general (let alone a presidential general), but this is, in my view, a good sign for the state of democracy in New York City as the Democratic primary is often the decisive election.
Gothimist won’t let me copy their graphs, but it has lots of interesting data on where turnout is up and whose turnout is up (25-34 year olds), though the group still comes up short compared to voters over 65.
New York City’s ranked-choice primary
With the hotly-contested ranked choice primary in NYC on Tuesday, voters in NYC (and well beyond) are getting a lot of publicity about how ranked-choice voting works.
The New Republic offers praise for what it calls the “generally friendly, policy-focused” campaign style that the primary has engendered.
Elsewhere, Stephen Pettigrew and Dylan Radley have a column out today about errors marking the ballot, following up on their paper here. Surveying ballots from a bunch of different jurisdiction, the paper finds that 4.8% attempts to vote for an RCV office contain an improper mark, that 90% of votes with an improper mark are nevertheless ultimately counted in the final tabulation, and that the average rejection rate in ranked choice races – while small – is still considerably higher than the rate in races without ranked choice.
Both the style of campaigning and the rate of errors in marking the ballot are factors – two among many – in assessing the desirability of a system. I’ll be interested to see if the error rate in particular is at all different in the NYC primary after the considerable wave of publicity.
“N.Y.C. Mayoral Primary May Hinge on Early Voters as Heat Wave Looms”
Yet another reminder that early and mail voting options help mitigate the degree to which a system of voting only on one day is subject to anomalies on that day that don’t really have anything to do with accurately conveying the desires of the eligible electorate. Here, it’s a forecast for 100-degree heat for Tuesday’s primary in NYC.
Election of the Week: NYC Mayoral Primary
There are lots of reasons to watch the NYC Democratic primary this week. It will be another opportunity to see whether rank-choice voting moderates who emerges out of a party’s primary. It is also just amusing to see the consternation that the primary seems to be eliciting among Democratic Party elites:
“Centrist Democrats are sounding the alarm that a surging democratic socialist mayoral candidate in New York City’s Tuesday primary could further set back the party’s already beleaguered national brand.”
This no doubt explains why James E. Clyburn and Bill Clinton have endorsed Cuomo, and why Bloomberg is throwing a lot of money into the race. Interestingly, as far as I am aware, Hillary Clinton has not endorsed Cuomo. Is that a sign?
Most importantly, if Cuomo wins, as is expected, it won’t necessarily be because of Bloomberg’s money. Cuomo does have significant union support that has also been driving his ground game.
“2024 Broke the Democrats. Can They Put Themselves Back Together?
Fascinating episode from Reveal that speaks to a range of issues of interest to readers of this Blog, from the NYC mayoral race to the appeal of Donald Trump among Latino voters to the future of VRA and the political cohesion of minority voters.
“Gov. Tim Walz calls for less ‘rigid’ Democratic nominating calendar in future election cycles”
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said Thursday Democrats need to take a broader approach to the states they are targeting during elections — which could mean further changes to the presidential nominating calendar.
Speaking with Minnesota Reformer editor Patrick Coolican at a States Newsroom conference in Minneapolis, the 2024 vice presidential candidate tackled multiple topics related to President Donald Trump’s time in office. He also discussed ways for the Democratic Party to bounce back after significant Republican wins in 2024, including Trump’s win over his and Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign.
One of the major questions leading up to the 2028 presidential election season — especially for Iowa — is the Democratic presidential nominating calendar. Following issues in the 2020 Democratic caucuses and Democratic National Committee concerns about the accessibility of the caucus system, Iowa was booted from it’s longtime first-in-the-nation position in the Democratic nominating calendar in 2022, replaced by South Carolina.
hen asked by Iowa Capital Dispatch Editor-in-Chief Kathie Obradovich which state should go first, Walz immediately quipped, “Minnesota.” But in a longer response, the Democratic governor said he believes Democrats should rotate which states kick off the nominating process each presidential election cycle — a process he said may not be popular in states that may not traditionally have held early contests, but could improve Democrats’ odds in elections.
He reflected on how in his 2024 run with Harris, winning the presidency came down to winning a handful of contested states.
“On the calendar, I think you can’t be too rigid,” Walz said. “And it was … I don’t know if the word is depressing, but going to the seven states over and over and over again, and recognizing that you could win a presidential election or lose one doing that — I think we’ve got to be broader.”
“Should SC lead off or bat clean-up in the Dem primary order? What Clyburn thinks”
From South Carolina’s The State:
When the Democratic National Committee decides its presidential nominating contest order, U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-Santee, said all he wants is for South Carolina to be in the early primary window.
Clyburn told reporters at his annual fish fry he’s not concerned about South Carolina being the lead off contest, after the Democratic Party kicked off its 2024 presidential nominating process with the Palmetto State.
“I never asked for anything more than keep us in the pre-primary window which covers a whole month before the primary starts,” Clyburn said. “So I think it’s important to the party for that to be the case. Whether it be one, two, three or four, I don’t care.”
I wrote a little about the upcoming 2028 DNC battle over the primary calendar back in March, here.
The Timing of Multiple-Round Elections
In his most recent Substack, Rob Richie offers some (exceedingly respectful) pushback on my post here about this New Bedford decision to hold a primary on October 7 before a general election November 4. He makes “the case for faster runoff elections — balancing voter access and voter energy.”
And he’s absolutely right that increasing the time between one round of elections and another can lead to a drop in turnout. In particular, he presents compelling data that runoff elections (most often in jurisdictions that require a majority instead of a plurality win) are correlated with a drop in turnout as the time lag from the main event increases.
That said, I’ll stand by my critique of the New Bedford plan in its context. First, when we’re talking about a primary and a general election, and not a runoff, I’d be surprised if there’s substantial evidence for the notion that the second round (the general election) will see lower turnout than the first (the primary). That’s particularly true if the general election is held on an early-November day that the public expects, but the primary timing is distinct from when most other municipalities in the area hold their primaries. (All of these calculations would change if the elections were consolidated on even years with other higher-profile elections, rather than on odd years … and I know those changes come with tradeoffs of their own.)
Also, the elections calendar has to account for common American process, which is really why I thought the piece about New Bedford was so valuable: it walks through the various steps that are normally hidden from public view. We allow recounts and challenges to election results after a primary’s election day, and (particularly important in low-turnout municipal elections) we allow mail voting that requires time for printing and sending ballots before a general’s election day. The time between the end of challenges for one round of an election and the need to print ballots for a subsequent round is going to make for a VERY tight squeeze in New Bedford. When Friday at 5pm is the last time to request a recount and the following Monday is the day that ballots have to be sent to the printer, that’s a schedule built on a prayer. And when you throw in our profoundly counterproductive apparent American commitment to underfunding and understaffing our elections offices, it’s never a great idea to create a plan that requires everything to run perfectly.
Rob’s been arguing for decades for instant runoff voting, and I think in many contexts it can be a good idea to eliminate the need for a second round of voting flat-out. But if you’re going to have a system with two rounds of voting, there has to be enough time to make sure they both work.
“Maryland’s primary elections are unconstitutional, lawsuit alleges”
The WaPo has a story on independent voters claiming a right to participate in primary elections under the state constitution. The complaint is here.
Existing Supreme Court precedent on the primary process and the First Amendment mostly gives the keys to parties to choose their electorates by opening or closing primaries as they wish. But nothing in federal law requires the state to hold a partisan primary at all. (States with “top X” primaries generally indicate candidates’ partisan preference without purporting to choose a frontrunner on the party’s behalf.)
Meanwhile, Nevada’s Assembly speaker introduced a last-minute bill (the session ends next week) to open up primaries to independent voters, over the apparent objections of state Republicans. (See the opening sentence of the last paragraph.)