New Yorkers are headed to the polls on Tuesday in a primary election that is both likely to decide the city’s next mayor and have major political implications for the future of the Democratic party.
The race pits two drastically different Democrats against one another. Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist endorsed by the progressive wing of the Democratic party, is the main challenger to Andrew Cuomo, the former New York governor who has been backed by the party’s centrists and billionaire donors.
Cuomo, who resigned as governor in 2021 after more than a dozen women accused him of sexual harassment, was the clear frontrunner earlier in the year. But Mamdani has enjoyed a meteoric surge in polls in recent weeks, and could benefit from the primary’s ranked-choice voting system.
Voters can rank five candidates in order of preference, and a poll released on Monday showed Mamdani winning the primary after multiple rounds of counting. Last week, Mamdani announced he was “cross-endorsing” with Brad Lander, a fellow progressive who was recently arrested by Ice agents while visiting an immigration court.
Early voting started in New York on 14 June, and the city said more than 380,000 people had voted by Sunday – more than double the number that voted early in the 2021 primary. New Yorkers under 40 accounted for 40% of all early voters, the New York Post reported, which would suggest good news for Mamdani, who has proved to be much more popular than Cuomo among young people.
A survey released last week found that 60% of 18-34-year-olds ranked Mamdani first, compared to just 10% for Cuomo.
Mamdani has run on a progressive platform, promising to freeze rent and make buses free citywide, and his campaign has been propelled by a social media following that dwarfs his rivals’. He was endorsed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at an event attended by thousands of people in June, and has also won the backing of Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator.
Cuomo has been much less visible, eschewing large rallies for tightly managed appearances at union offices and other small venues. As the race has narrowed, his campaign and the organizations backing him – some of which are funded by billionaire Republican donors – have focused almost exclusively on attacking Mamdani, spending millions of dollars on mailers and TV adverts.
The winner of the primary is not guaranteed to become the 111th mayor of New York, but it is highly likely in a city where registered Democrats heavily outnumber Republicans.
The incumbent, Eric Adams, who won the 2021 election as a Democrat but is running this year as an independent candidate, is deeply unpopular in the city. Last year, Adams was charged with taking bribes and accepting foreign campaign contributions, but the charges were dropped in April after the Trump administration intervened.
