(Bloomberg) -- New York City residents heads to the polls today to choose a mayor to lead the most populous U.S. city’s recovery from the coronavirus pandemic
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams led in an Ipsos poll released Monday on the Democratic primary, with former presidential candidate Andrew Yang in second, former city Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia in third and civil-rights attorney Maya Wiley in fourth. The winner of the Democratic primary is heavily favored to win the November general election.
Early voting ended Sunday afternoon with nearly 200,000 people casting their ballots. That’s more than one-fourth of the roughly 700,000 New Yorkers that went to the polls in 2013 when Mayor Bill de Blasio won the Democratic primary.
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Election Eve
Yang and Garcia campaigned together in Flushing, Queens, Monday night, as they tried to encourage voters to rank down the ballot. Voters can choose as many as five candidates in order of preference.
Yang asked his supporters to pick Garcia as their second choice. When Garcia was asked who her supporters should make their second choice, Garcia said her supporters “are going to have to make up their own minds.” Garcia says the alliance is about spreading the word on ranked-choice voting and not just about endorsing another candidate. -- Skylar Woodhouse
Wiley Rally
Mayoral hopeful Maya Wiley gathered about 250 supporters on the steps of the Brooklyn Museum of Art for an election eve rally that included members of Brooklyn’s congressional delegation and progressive local elected officials.
After loudspeakers drew a crowd from Brooklyn’s Eastern Parkway blaring rhythm and blues of James Brown and Otis Redding, some in the crowd cheered at the word “Maya-mentum,” a campaign catch phrase signifying her recent rise in polls after endorsements by U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Elizabeth Warren. Wiley would be the first woman and second Black New York City mayor.
Introduced by women’s rights icon Gloria Steinem, Wiley called on her supporters “to have the courage” to fight against income inequality and racism and for struggling New Yorkers.
“I am moved not because I have been praised, I am moved because this is a movement,” she said. -- Henry Goldman
Online Searches
Adams has overtaken Yang in online search interest on the eve of the 13-way Democratic primary for New York City mayor.
Yang is now effectively tied with Wiley for second place in search interest, followed by Garcia and Bronx nonprofit executive Dianne Morales, according to Google Trends.
Trending searches are a measure of voter curiosity, but not necessarily their voting intentions. Further complicating the analysis: A new ranked-choice system that allows voters to select as many as five candidates in order of preference, encouraging them to do more research on candidates other than their top choice.
Other election-related trending searches include questions about polling locations, how ranked-choice voting works, and whether independents can vote in New York primaries. (They can’t.) -- Gregory Korte
Adams Is Favored
Adams was the first choice of 28% of likely voters in a poll conducted June 10-17 by Ipsos. Yang had 20%, Garcia had 15% and Wiley had 13%. The poll showed gains for all four of the top candidates. The poll is based on a sample of 2,924 residents, and the credibility interval among likely voters is plus or minus 5.7 percentage points.
On Tuesday, voters will be asked to rank five candidates in order of preference. A candidate must have more than 50% of the vote to win the election. With Adams the first choice for only about a quarter of voters, there is a good chance the second, third and subsequent choices will swing the race, according to Ipsos.
Adams is ranked on the most voters’ ballots, giving him the best chance of winning, based on the poll results. But Yang and Garcia are also ranked on a majority of ballots, Ipsos said.
“Our simulation suggests the ranking exercise will go all the way to a head-to-head matchup between two candidates before someone gets over the needed 50%+1 threshold,” Ipsos said in a statement. -- Skylar Woodhouse
Yang and Garcia Alliance
Yang defended his decision to forge an alliance with rival Garcia, a move that jolted the mayoral contest in its waning days.
“I don’t see how that can be anything but a positive thing,” Yang said Monday in Chinatown.
The two candidates appeared together at events over the weekend and Monday. The alliance may stop the rise of Adams, who accused the pair of trying to disenfranchise Black voters.
Maya Wiley, who is Black and has become a late leading candidate, said she didn’t agree with Adams.
“This partnership is not racist and we should not be using this term so loosely against other candidates at the end of a long campaign when New Yorkers are all coming together to make important choices about our collective future,” Wiley said in a statement.
When asked about Garcia appearing with him but not endorsing his campaign, Yang said: “I think our campaigning together speaks volumes about the kind of leadership that this city has been lacking] for far too long.” -- Skylar Woodhouse
Read More: NYC Mayoral Rivals Team Up, Aiming to Weaken Race’s Front-Runner
De Blasio Finalizing Ballot
De Blasio encouraged New Yorkers to vote and take full advantage of the city’s new ranked-choice election system. He said he’s still finalizing his ballot while declining to share details of his preference for a successor.
“This is an absolutely vital election, it will help determine the future of New York City as few elections ever have because we’re coming out of the biggest crisis in our history,”de Blasio said during a press conference at City Hall on Monday.
De Blasio called the joint campaign effort by Yang and Garcia an “opportunistic move” given differences in their platforms. While it’s typical for ranked-choice candidates to team up, “this one strikes me as sort of an odd couple situation,” he said. -- Nic Querolo
Early Voting Closes
Nearly 200,000 people cast their ballots over nine days of early voting that ended Sunday afternoon, according to the city’s board of elections.
While the turnout pales in comparison to the 1.1 million New Yorkers who voted early in the November presidential elections, it represents 28% of the roughly 700,000 New Yorkers who voted in the 2013 primaries. In 2013 there was no early voting, which took effect in 2019.
Two-thirds of the ballots came from Manhattan and Brooklyn, the elections board said. -- Shelly Banjo
©2021 Bloomberg L.P.
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