4 takeaways from New York City’s ranked choice voting results

Zohran Mamdani may have already been the presumptive winner of last week’s Democratic mayoral primary, but the release of ranked choice tabulations on Tuesday shows the 33-year-old Assembly member secured it with ease, finishing 56% to 44% against ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo after just three rounds of ranked choice voting.

The New York City Board of Elections released only first-choice votes on election night, and in Mamdani’s case – and in many other races on the ballot – candidates commanded large enough leads to take victory laps that night. But the release of the tabulations from voters’ entire ballots on Tuesday shows the extent to which candidates were able to benefit (or fall behind) in the ranked choice voting system.

Tuesday’s release includes ranked choice tabulations of all in-person votes and mail-in votes received and processed by Election Day. The BOE will continue to release tabulations for any remaining ballots, including cured affidavit ballots, on a weekly basis.

Here’s what the ranked choice tabulations told us.

Ranked choice voting didn’t come close to saving Cuomo

Mamdani didn’t just dominate in first-choice votes on election night. He got the better of Cuomo in ranked choice voting, too, and it wasn’t even close. Through three rounds of ranked choice voting, Mamdani benefited from roughly 99,000 transferred votes, while Cuomo benefited from just over half of that, around 53,000. (Proponents of the Don’t Rank Cuomo strategy hailed that as a victory for that message.) Even with those transferred votes, Cuomo’s finish at 428,530 votes was still less than the number of first-choice votes that Mamdani received: 446,163. Cuomo’s campaign focused on the fact that he received more votes than Mayor Eric Adams received in the 2021 primary and didn’t commit to run or not in November. In a sign of how little regard Mamdani’s campaign is giving Cuomo after these results, the Democratic nominee said in a statement that he’s excited to defeat Adams. 

Historic turnout 

At least 1,026,783 people voted in the mayoral Democratic primary – the highest voter turnout rate of any city mayoral primary in the last several decades. Comparatively, about 940,000 people voted in the 2021 Democratic mayoral primary. Both victor Mamdani and loser Cuomo both received more votes than New York City Mayor Eric Adams did in that race. While the mayor ended ranked-choice tabulation with about 404,500 votes, Mamdani got a whopping 545,000. Cuomo meanwhile ended up with about 428,500 votes – a far cry from his opponent, but still 24,000 more than Adams. The fact that Mamdani still triumphed in such a decisive manner over Cuomo speaks to the winner’s success in expanding the electorate. 

Council candidates in tighter races maintain their leads

It appears that no candidate who went to bed on election night with a lead was overtaken with ranked choice tabulations. That includes many City Council candidates in crowded primaries. Incumbents Chris Marte in lower Manhattan and Darlene Mealy in Central Brooklyn survived several spirited challenges. Virginia Maloney, daughter of former Rep. Carolyn Maloney, prevailed in the crowded and expensive District 4 race on the Upper East Side. Harvey Epstein won in District 2 that includes the East Village. In District 8 in East Harlem and parts of the Bronx, Elsie Encarnacion bested a crowded field. Justin Sanchez won in District 17 in southeast Bronx and Ty Hankerson won in the term-limited speaker’s District 28 in southeast Queens. Phil Wong prevailed in the purple central Queens District 30.

Ranked choice voting may be catching on

Ranked choice voting is still relatively new in New York City, but it may be picking up steam. In 2021’s Democratic mayoral primary, roughly 140,000 ballots were “inactive” by the final round, meaning that those ballots only included candidates who had already been eliminated. It’s possible that those ballots included five ranked candidates who had all been eliminated, but it’s likely that some of those ballots featured fewer than five ranked candidates. A post-election analysis by the city Campaign Finance Board that year showed that only 46% of Democratic mayoral primary voters used all five of the slots on their ballot. While we don’t yet have that level of data on ranked choice voting in this year’s primary, a much lower number of ballots were inactive in the final round of initial tallying in this Democratic mayoral primary – just around 53,000 – potentially a sign that more voters took full advantage of the ranking system.