NYC Mayoral Race Tightens as New Poll Shows Mamdani Primary Win

New Yorkers will head to the polls Tuesday to choose a Democratic candidate for mayor as a sweltering heat wave engulfs the city, and with tightened security in place after the US unleashed airstrikes on Iran.

Despite a robust turnout of early voters, with numbers roughly doubling from four years ago, most residents will still cast their ballot on election day. The first hot spell of the year is set to send temperatures in the city soaring above 100F (38C), just as the longest lines are expected at the 1,213 poll sites across the five boroughs.

The result of the election will reverberate much further.

On the ballot, voters face a stark choice between the two top candidates: Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is betting on experience and the promise of a safer city to win the day; his upstart challenger Zohran Mamdani is hoping his platform of rent freezes and free child care will help voters look past his limited political resume. While polls have largely shown Cuomo winning, a new Emerson College survey released Monday showed Mamdani prevailing in the city’s complex ranked-choice voting system.

The outcome could help define the path forward for the Democratic Party, as strategists look ahead to next year’s Midterm elections.

The race has also become a microcosm of New Yorkers’ views on ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, with Cuomo pledging support for Israel as Mamdani criticizes the country’s wars in Gaza and Iran.

Lee Miringoff, director at polling firm Marist Poll, said the US entry into the war adds an extra layer to the election.

“The US bombing of Iran throws an exclamation point into the race where both Mamdani and Cuomo are forced to double down on their views about war and Israel. Voters will have to choose between two ever more starkly different views, with implications for the Democratic Party going forward,” said Miringoff.

Read more: NYC’s Zohran Mamdani Tries Selling Socialism to the Home of Wall Street

Still, most voters say that housing costs, inflation and public safety are top of mind as they cast their ballots, with concern growing that the city is drifting off course and in need of new direction.

In Queens, early voter Justin Valdes said affordability was one of his top issues, echoing the concerns of a majority of voters interviewed by Bloomberg News in the week leading up to election day.

“I hope that the city can become more affordable,” said Valdes, 51, who was laid off last December and has a toddler. He cited free child care as the reason he ranked Mamdani first. “I was born in Flushing. So I’d like to stay in Queens, and it’s a lot tougher when you have a kid.”

At least half of those surveyed said public safety was one of their main worries, including Petra Aguilar, also voting early in Queens. Aguilar, 62, said she wanted more surveillance in her neighborhood and more police officers patrolling the area, calling New York “la manzana podrida” — Spanish for “the rotten apple.” She ranked Cuomo first.

While the field is crowded, with 11 candidates running for the official Democratic ticket, polls show the contest comes down to the two men. A Marist Poll released last week and conducted from June 9 to June 12 showed Cuomo leading Mamdani 55% to 45% once all ranked-choice votes are counted, a margin narrowed from the 60-40 split the same poll found in May.

The Emerson College survey released Monday showed Mamdani continuing that momentum. He now trails Cuomo by 3 percentage points in first-choice balloting. But a simulation of ranked-choice voting from the survey has Mamdani edging out a win after eight rounds of counting, 52% to 48%.

The survey, for Pix11 and The Hill, was conducted June 18 to June 20 and has a margin of error of 3.4 percentage points.

Bets placed on Kalshi, which allows people to wage on political events, give Mamdani a 51% chance of winning as of Monday, significantly up from the weekend before the poll was released.

Comptroller Brad Lander is polling third in some surveys, and has forged an alliance with Mamdani — a Queens assemblyman — to encourage their supporters to rank each other high on their ballots. In the last days of the race, Lander, 55, was arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers as he escorted a defendant out of court in Manhattan.

The high stakes of the race — and the ideological gulf between the leading candidates — are reflected in the money. A super PAC backing Cuomo, Fix the City, has raised nearly $25 million from finance and real estate billionaires including Michael R. Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP, as well as Bill Ackman, Daniel Loeb and Steven Roth. Home Depot Inc. co-founder Ken Langone and delivery app DoorDash Inc. have also contributed.

Mamdani’s social media-fueled campaign, meanwhile, has attracted younger voters and drawn endorsements from progressive leaders like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders. Donations have come from more than 20,000 individuals, the most of any candidate, with an average gift of just $62, the lowest in the race.

Read More: Here’s Where NYC Mayoral Candidates Stand on Key Issues

Early voting, which ran from June 14 through June 22, saw turnout of 384,338 across the nine days, according to preliminary data posted by the NYC Board of Elections on X. That’s up from 191,197 in 2021. While some of the increase could be due to reduced Covid restrictions and fears, the same uptick wasn’t seen between the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections, suggesting other factors may be at play.

The high turnout could favor Mamdani, who performs well among younger voters, a group that is more likely to cast their ballot before Election Day, according to Miringoff.

Still, the picture remains murky. Ranked-choice voting, where New Yorkers can list up to five candidates in order of preference, is unfamiliar to many and makes outcomes harder to predict. Tuesday’s vote is also just the first chapter. Both Cuomo and Mamdani are expected to appear again on the ballot in November, with whoever loses the primary running on a different ticket. There, they would face incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, who won the 2021 election as a Democrat but is running this time as an independent.

New Yorkers are weighing a litany of post-pandemic issues, including a cost-of-living crisis marked by record high rents and historic vacancy lows, as well as soaring child-care costs. Crime, from felonies on the subway to thefts at drug stores, is still visible across the city even as the New York Police Department has ramped up its presence. Residents also report frustration with unreliable subway service, longer emergency response times and the state of schooling.

Read More: NYC Rents, Rats and Crime Show How the City Was Scarred by Covid

This month, 77% of likely primary voters said the city is heading in the wrong direction, up from 44% in June 2021, according to the Marist poll.

Each candidate offers a distinct vision for tackling these problems. Cuomo has stressed his crisis-tested leadership and his experience standing up to President Donald Trump, while advocating for a balanced approach to policing. Mamdani has called for a bold progressive agenda, including rent freezes, universal early child care, free public buses and community-based public safety, all paid for with tax hikes on businesses and the wealthy and by taking on tens of billions of dollars of debt. To add to the existing debt load he would need state approval.

Lander has focused on homelessness and mental health outreach, while other candidates — who remain long shots based on current polling — have pledged tenant protections and housing expansion.

The primary has captured national attention because it speaks to deeper rifts within the Democratic Party. Ocasio-Cortez has portrayed Mamdani as a standard-bearer for an increasingly left-wing movement among younger Democrats, while painting Cuomo as part of an entrenched “gerontocracy” that has looked past the sexual-harassment accusations that led to his resignation as governor in 2021. Cuomo has denied the allegations.

Cuomo’s billionaire donors, meanwhile, joined by major unions and influential Black leaders, have said Mamdani is too radical and inexperienced, with some singling out his criticism of Israel as a key voting issue.

Nancy Ullman, a former travel consultant voting in Midtown Manhattan, said she cast her vote early for Cuomo because “he was wonderful during Covid.” She said she was also concerned about rising antisemitism in the city. More than half of the city’s hate crimes reported in May were anti-Jewish, according to the NYPD.

Some 40% of Jewish New Yorkers likely to vote in the primary rank Cuomo as their first choice, compared to about 20% for Mamdani, Marist data show. Among Black voters, the split was 48% to 11% in favor of Cuomo.

Deon Gaynor, a guidance counselor at a Manhattan public school who lives in the Bronx, said she voted for Mamdani even as other members of the Black community swung toward Cuomo. Her main issue is affordable housing, which she felt Mamdani spent far more time talking about.

“I have nothing against Cuomo. I would vote for him or Adams, but the issue of affordable housing is a big deal,” she said.