Voters in the Big Apple had the option to rank up to five of the 13 candidates in the race. Since no candidate will win a majority of the vote outright, the New York City Board of Elections will tabulate voters’ ranked choices to determine the winner.
The nominee is expected to be determined by mid-July and is heavily favored to win the general election in November.
As of Tuesday night, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, former sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia and civil rights attorney Maya Wiley were the top contenders in the initial vote preferences among voters. These results could change once absentee ballots are included and the ranked-choice tabulation is run.
Adams came out to chants that “the champ is here” — Muhammad Ali’s famous boast, sampled in a Jadakiss song — and addressed jubilant supporters. He acknowledged the ranked-choice process to come, as early, preliminary results Tuesday showed him ahead of the crowded field of candidates, but spoke as if the race was over.
“We know, we know that this is going to be layers, this is the first early voting count — we know that. We know there’s going to be twos and threes and fours- we know that. But there’s something else we know. That New York City said, ‘Our first choice is Eric Adams,’ ” Adams said.
“We’re going to allow them to go through the process and count the ballots, and count all the ranking. And we know that this is an opportunity for people to participate, but the feeling today is just such a…such a good feeling,” he said amid cheers at his Brooklyn headquarters.
For her part, Garcia is already looking ahead to the coming rounds of ranked-choice tabulations.
“This is going to be a ranked choice election,” Garcia said at her post-election event. “This is not just about the ones. It’s going to be about the twos and threes.”
Andrew Yang, the former 2020 presidential candidate, conceded in a speech Tuesday night as the results from early and primary day in-person voting came in showed him placing a distant fourth behind Adams, Garcia and Wiley.
“I am not going to be the mayor of New York City based on the numbers coming in tonight,” Yang told supporters.
Since no candidate will win a majority of the first-choice votes, tabulation will continue in rounds. The candidate with the fewest votes after the initial count will be eliminated and all ballots for that candidate will be reallocated to the next highest-ranked candidate selected. That process will continue with the remaining candidates until two are left with the winner determined by who has the most votes in that final round.
New York City’s Board of Elections plans to release the first set of results from this ranked-choice voting process on June 29, but those results will only include votes from early in-person and election day voters, not absentee ballots. New York state law prevents the board from beginning to count absentee ballots until June 28.
The board will release the results of the ranked-choice voting process again on July 6, this time including as many absentee ballots as they’ve been able to process. They’ll report results again every Tuesday until all the ballots have been counted.
Also on Tuesday, CNN projected that Curtis Sliwa would win the Republican mayoral nomination in his party’s primary, beating Fernando Mateo. The activist and founder of Guardian Angels will take on the winner of the Democratic primary in November’s general election for mayor. The Democrat is heavily favored in that contest.