What to know about ranked-choice voting as NYC heads to polls

New York City’s ranked choice voting system will be critical to determining who prevails in its Democratic mayoral primary. 

Voters first approved ranked-choice voting for certain city elections in 2019, but this will be only its second mayoral race to be run under the system. The winner of the Democratic primary four years ago won by about 7,000 votes, and the primary may be just as close this time. 

Supporters tout the system as an alternative to the first-past-the-post system, in which the candidate who receives the most votes wins, even if it’s with less than a majority of the vote. They argue it requires a candidate to build a wider coalition and can produce winners who are more acceptable to a larger group of voters. 

In New York City’s ranked-choice system, voters are allowed to rank up to five candidates in order of their preference, though they aren’t required to rank five. If one candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round, they are declared the winner outright. 

This seems unlikely to occur with a crowded field of nearly a dozen candidates, including several big names in the city. If no candidate receives a majority, then the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and their votes are redistributed according to their supporters’ next choices. 

If a voter doesn’t have a second choice, then their vote is considered exhausted and won’t factor into the next round of counting. 

The process continues as additional candidates are eliminated in subsequent rounds and one candidate reaches a majority. 

In 2021, that took eight rounds for now-Mayor Eric Adams (D), who is running this time as an independent for reelection. He started out ahead in the first round of counting with about 30 percent of the vote, but he didn’t gain much in the following rounds as other candidates gained on him. 

In the seventh round, he was ahead with just over 40 percent of the vote to just over 30 percent for former city Sanitation Department Commissioner Kathryn Garcia and 29 percent for former city official Maya Wiley. 

Wiley was eliminated, and most of her supporters preferred Garcia, but it wasn’t enough for her to beat Adams, who ultimately won by less than 1 point. 

This year, Andrew Cuomo and Zohran Mamdani will need to rely on support from voters who prefer one of the other candidates, such as Comptroller Brad Lander, New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and former Comptroller Scott Stringer, as their top choice. Those three candidates have been in the next tier behind Cuomo and Mamdani but generally haven’t received more than low double digits in the polls. 

Mamdani is hoping to use ranked-choice to his advantage as he and some other candidates have worked to try to get voters to rank any candidate except for Cuomo. Mamdani and Lander, who has often come in third in polling, have cross-endorsed each other, calling on their supporters to rank them first and second. 

The goal is to make it more likely that as many votes for one candidate as possible go to the other candidate when one of them is eliminated, creating a united front against Cuomo. 

Adrienne Adams didn’t formally cross-endorse, to some Cuomo opponents’ disappointment, but she called on voters to back a slate of candidates endorsed by the Working Families Party, a smaller, left-wing party influential among progressives. That slate includes herself, Mamdani, Lander and state Sen. Zellnor Myrie. 

Cuomo regularly has been first in the initial round based on polling, usually in the mid-to-upper 30s. That would mean he needs help to get to a majority. Polling has shown him inching up to usually get there in seven to 10 rounds of counting. 

The final results of the race are also likely to not come on Tuesday. New York City allows mail-in ballots postmarked by Tuesday to be counted after primary day, so the rounds of ranked choice won’t happen until next Tuesday, July 1. 

But what seems apparent is Cuomo and Mamdani will engage in a multi-round race to get to more than 50 percent.