This post is for anyone interested in the New York City race for mayor. Today is Primary Day and I just got home from voting. It is a very interesting election to determine the Democratic candidate in November. Traditionally in New York City, whoever wins the Democratic primary wins the race, but this is not a traditional year. Incumbent mayor Eric Adams who was up on federal charges for taking bribes from the Turkish government had the charges dropped by the Trump administration when he agreed to work with ICE agents and so he lost all support by Democrats. He is not on the ballot today but will run as an independent.
Former governor Andrew Cuomo who resigned with sexual harassment charges by former female colleagues and employees pending is the leading candidate but Socialist-Democrat Assembly member Zohran Mamdani, who has the support of young people and has been enforced by Senator Bernie Sanders and AOC has closed the gap and some projections show him winning the race when the rank choice voting is revealed next week.
This is how the rank choice voting works:
“In New York City’s version, voters get to rank up to five candidates, from first to last, on the ballot.
If one candidate is the first choice of a majority of voters — more than 50% — that person wins the race outright, just like in a traditional election.
If nobody hits that threshold, ranked choice analysis kicks in.
Vote tabulation is done by computer in rounds. After the first round, the candidate in last place — the candidate ranked No. 1 by the fewest amount of people — is eliminated. The computer then looks at the ballots cast by people who ranked that candidate first, to see who they ranked second. Those people’s votes are then redistributed to their second choices.
That process then repeats. As more candidates are eliminated, voters’ third, fourth and even fifth choices could potentially come into play.
Here is a simulation of how the voting may go, The first candidate to get 50% of the votes in any round wins the nomination.
Rounds continue until there are only two candidates left. The one with the most votes wins.”
I voted for Cuomo. Stringer, Landers and Adrienne Adams because Mandami is polarizing and could lead moderate voters to vote for Adams or the Republican Curtis Sliwa who supports Trump. It will be an interesting election today, next week and in November.