The final public poll suggests the potential for an upset in Tuesday’s New York Democratic mayoral primary — an outcome that would be dramatic but that also might end up resolving nothing.
The Emerson College/WPIX/The Hill survey shows former Gov. Andrew Cuomo leading state Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani 36% to 34% in the initial first-choice count, with Mamdani eventually overtaking Cuomo after multiple rounds of ranked choice tabulation and winning the final tally 52% to 48%.
But a few caveats are in order.
First, public polls in the campaign have been sparse. Only Emerson and Marist University have been regularly conducting them. And Marist’s final poll found a different result, with Cuomo up by double digits at both the start and the end of ranked choice tabulation. (More on the details of that survey below.)
One of those polls may be a lot more accurate than the other, although there is room for both to be right, since Marist’s was taken a week earlier, and the race could have shifted in that time.
The composition of the electorate is uncertain, too. Both Emerson and Marist find that Cuomo has an advantage with voters who say they will cast ballots in person Tuesday, as opposed to taking part in early voting or voting by mail. But will those voters show up in the numbers pollsters expect? It’s a cliché to talk about how crucial turnout is as a variable, but there it is.
Moreover, ranked choice voting is still new to New York City; this is only the second mayoral contest since it was implemented. It’s still uncommon elsewhere. So no polling outlet has a deep and well-established track record when it comes to measuring such races. That having been said, Emerson’s final poll in the 2021 New York mayoral primary showed now-Mayor Eric Adams narrowly edging out Kathryn Garcia in the final ranked choice round, which almost perfectly matched the actual outcome.
What are the biggest differences between the final public polls?
Overall, Marist has Cuomo ahead of Mamdani 38% to 27% in the initial round and 55% to 45% after multiple ranked choice rounds. Emerson has Cuomo up 36% to 34% initially but Mamdani winning 52% to 48% after ranked choice tabulations.
A significant difference between the two surveys: how the rivals perform among Black voters, who will comprise about a third of the electorate. Cuomo has enjoyed massive advantages over the rest of the field with those voters throughout the campaign, and that trend continues in Marist’s poll, with Cuomo 52 points ahead of Mamdani heading into the final round of tabulation. But Emerson’s poll shows Mamdani making late gains among Black voters and winning 38% of them in the final round against Cuomo.
The other major difference involves a third candidate, city Comptroller Brad Lander. In both the Marist and the Emerson polls, he is the final non-Cuomo/Mamdani candidate remaining as the ranked choice eliminations progress. In both polls, when Lander is then eliminated, his supporters break more to Mamdani than to Cuomo.
In Marist’s poll, that is more of an incidental development, as Cuomo’s lead over Mamdani is cut from 13 points to 10 points in the final round. But in Emerson’s, the effect is dramatic and decisive, propelling Mamdani to a 4-point victory after having trailed Cuomo by a point in the previous round.
That could be related to the timing of the two polls. Only Emerson’s was conducted after Lander’s high-profile arrest last week at an immigration court. That may well have boosted his baseline support, which is higher in the initial round in the Emerson poll (13%) than in the Marist poll (8%). Plus, Lander and Mamdani teamed up last week, with each asking their voters to include the other in their ballot rankings. That could explain why Mamdani gains so much in the Emerson poll once Lander is eliminated.
When will we know the results?
Don’t expect to know the winner Tuesday, or until at least next Tuesday (probably). Most votes will be reported out Tuesday evening and overnight — but those will be only first-choice votes. And as long as they are postmarked by Tuesday, mail-in ballots can still be added in over the next week. It’ll be next Tuesday when the city actually runs the ranked choice tabulations. And even then, if the race is exceptionally close, there could still be the possibility that provisional ballots would further shift the count.
Meanwhile, even though New York is deeply blue, that won’t necessarily decide the next mayor. New York’s election laws make it possible — and easy — for candidates who lose primaries to turn around and run in the general election. All they need is a ballot line, which they can get by starting their own parties, which is actually not that hard to do.
Cuomo has already done that, having launched the Fight and Deliver Party. Officially, his plan is to run as the Fight and Deliver nominee in addition to being the Democratic nominee, since in New York, candidates can also be nominated by multiple parties. But if Cuomo falls short to Mamdani, the temptation to take the fight to a wider general election audience would be enormous, given Mamdani’s left-wing politics (he’s a self-declared socialist) and history of inflammatory statements. Cuomo’s father, Mario, did just that in his own mayoral campaign in 1977, running as the Liberal Party nominee after he fell to Ed Koch in the Democratic primary.
Meanwhile, Mamdani will most likely have the option of running as the candidate of the Working Families Party, which has already encouraged voters to back him in the Democratic race. There’s no love lost between Cuomo and the WFP, which has indicated it wouldn’t give him its ballot line even if he were the Democratic nominee.
Then there’s the current mayor, Adams, who is already running in the general election on a ballot line of his own making, while Republicans are poised to nominate Curtis Sliwa. Jim Walden, a former federal prosecutor, is also mounting an independent bid.
In other words, the waters are already crowded. For both Cuomo and Mamdani, narrowly losing the primary might prove to be nothing more than an invitation to keep going.
