On Tuesday, New York City held the election that will effectively decide the next mayor of the most populous city in the U.S. (Technically, Tuesday was just the primary, but given how blue New York City is, the Democratic nominee is heavily favored in the Nov. 2 general election.) However, we aren’t expected to know the official winner until the week of July 12. That’s partly due to the city’s adoption of ranked-choice voting for municipal elections, but mostly it’s because New York takes a long time to count absentee ballots. (Absentee results won’t even begin to be released until July 6.)
That said, some preliminary results have already been announced: specifically, the first-choice results of ballots cast in person (either early or on election day). As of 2 a.m. on June 23, with 799,827 ballots counted, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams had 32 percent of first-choice votes, attorney Maya Wiley had 22 percent, former New York City Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia had 20 percent and businessman Andrew Yang had 12 percent. (Nine other candidates received less than 6 percent of the vote each.) Based on this initial vote tally, Adams, a moderate former police officer who campaigned on a tough-on-crime platform is in a strong position to win. However, there is still a narrow path to victory for the progressive Wiley or the