Polls have closed in New York City’s contentious Democratic mayoral primary, but the ranked-choice voting system means it could still be a while before the race is called.
Leading up to the election on Tuesday, the race tightened between former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and anti-status quo state lawmaker Zohran Mamdani, and a mounting sense of urgency showed in substantial early voting turnout among New Yorkers.
Following the city’s adoption of ranked-choice voting, however, tabulating results may not be quite as simple as counting each ballot once and naming a winner—and thus, it may be some time before we know who the Democratic candidate will be.
In fact, in 2021, when current Mayor Eric Adams ran in the Democratic primary, he didn’t get the nod until July 6, two weeks after election day.
For the mayoral primary, as well as elections for several city officials, voters can rank up to five top choices for the party’s nomination in order of preference rather than picking just one candidate. The system was adopted in 2019 and first used in 2021.
With the ranked-choice system, even if a voter’s top choice has not garnered enough support to win, their rankings of other candidates can still play a role in determining a race’s victor.
Read More: How Ranked-Choice Voting in the New York City Mayoral Primary Works
Counting will initially proceed much like in any other election: Each ballot will be tabulated, and if a majority—over 50%—of voters have the same first-choice candidate, that candidate will win the election.
Most polls of the primary race indicate, however, that this election will not be decided in that initial count, especially since voters’ potential five ranked choices can be split across 11 candidates for mayor. In New York City’s system, if a candidate does not receive a majority in first-choice votes, the ranked-choice system will kick in.
Vote tabulation is then done by computer in rounds. The person in last place—meaning the candidate with the fewest top-choice votes—will be eliminated with each new round. Ballots that had that candidate ranked at the top will then have their votes counted toward their next preferred candidate. That process will continue until there is a majority winner.
Unofficial preliminary results for first-choice ballots will start being released before long following the poll closures at 9 p.m., but according to the New York City Board of Elections, counting for ranked-choice rounds will not begin until one week after the election—July 1. And with the election appearing likely to go multiple rounds, it could be some time after July 1 until all the ballots are counted and a winner is finalized.
Though it may take a while for the official results to be certified with mail-in voting, early voting, affidavits, and same-day voting, as the rounds continue, the Board of Elections will release a report each week.
If the election gets to that point, it will become clearer who is likely to win with time as these reports will show a candidate inching closer to a majority 50% as each round finishes.
Read more: Where the New York City Mayoral Primary Candidates Stand on the Issues
Mamdani and allies—including fellow mayoral candidate Brad Lander—have sought to use the ranking system to their advantage by asking their supporters not to rank Cuomo, potentially giving progressive candidates a boost over the more centrist former governor in later vote-counting rounds as they add votes from ballots that initially ranked like-minded opponents above them.
Though Adams ran as a Democrat in 2021, he was not on the ballot in Tuesday’s election. In April, he dropped out of the Democratic primary after an indictment marred his tenure as mayor, choosing instead to run for reelection as an independent. Whoever wins the Democratic primary will go up against him in November.
The city’s registered Democrats heavily outnumber any other party affiliation, and the Democratic candidate has won in the last three mayoral elections.
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