Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old democratic socialist and state legislator, stunned the political world Tuesday night as he seized a seismic lead over longtime front-runner Andrew Cuomo. Though the former governor appears to have conceded the race to Mamdani, his victory won’t be confirmed until after the city’s Board of Elections releases its first ranked-choice-voting results next week. Below, in reverse chronological-order, is how this groundbreaking night in New York City politics unfolded.
From our own David Freedlander’s Election Night look at how all this happened:
It was by any measure one of the biggest upsets in New York political history, an order of magnitude bigger than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s own victory over the Democratic Establishment almost seven years to the day earlier. That was a low-turnout affair for a congressional seat, and no one saw AOC coming. This time a former governor had a $25 million super-PAC behind him, the support of all the editorial boards, and his campaign saw Mamdani’s coming from a mile away and blitzed the airwaves warning that he was dangerously unprepared and far too left wing for the job.
None of it mattered. Cuomo never understood ranked-choice voting, while Mamdani teamed up with Brad Lander to consolidate the left and liberal vote in his favor. Mamdani’s failure to condemn the phrase “Globalize the intifada” last week, in the face of allegations from Cuomo and others that he was an antisemite, was scarcely a blip.
Mamdani’s victory comes just eight months after the city took a sharp right-ward turn in the presidential election, coming out for Donald Trump in a way that it has for no Republican in a generation. At the beginning of the mayoral race, the Democratic contenders tacked right too, talking up quality-of-life concerns and crime and repudiating their previous stances from the woke era of four years earlier.
Only Mamdani remained resolutely in the left lane and stressed affordability. In the end, voters responded not just to someone coloring in broad strokes but someone whose entire campaign was a repudiation of a Democratic Establishment that failed to stop Trump’s return to power and then lined up behind a governor who had been driven from office in a sexual-harassment scandal barely three years earlier.
Read the rest here.
Notes WNYC’s Brigid Bergin:
There will be a lot of people looking at the polls showing Andrew Cuomo with a lead throughout, but Mamdani’s campaign was always about expanding the electorate. When you bring in new voters, they don’t show up in your likely Dem voter polling.
Lander’s own Election Night speech was in part an enthusiastic celebration of Mamdani’s success. Mamdani, in his victory speech, called out Lander and they embraced onstage. The pair became de facto running mates in the final stage of the campaign, and it will be interesting to see what role Lander continues to have in Mamdani’s campaign and in his potential administration.
The comptroller is currently third in the election results, with 11.3 percent, and it’s likely most of those voters will have ranked Mamdani as well.
Lander also gave one of the most notable quotes of the night about Andrew Cuomo (it was a big day for the F-word):
Mamdani took the stage before a jubilant crowd of campaign supporters following a fiery speech from State Attorney General Letitia James.
“Tonight, we made history. In the words of Nelson Mandela, it always seems impossible until it’s done. My friends, we have done it. I will be your Democratic nominee for the mayor of New York City,” he said to thunderous applause.
Mamdani said his campaign won because the people of New York stood up for a city they can afford, one where public safety “keeps us truly safe,” and a city where the mayor will use their power “to reject Donald Trump’s fascism.”
He recounted his campaign’s multi-borough strategy, capped off with a late-night walk across the length of Manhattan on the Friday before Election Day.
“We have won from Harlem to Bay Ridge. We have won from Jackson Heights to Port Richmond. We have won from Maspeth to Chinatown,” he said.
He also addressed the contentiousness of the monthslong campaign against Cuomo, alluding to airwaves filled with millions of dollars in “smears and slander.” Mamdani promised to be a mayor for all New Yorkers, regardless of political leaning.
“I will be the mayor for every New Yorker, whether you voted for me, for Governor Cuomo, or felt too disillusioned by a long, broken political system to vote at all,” he said. “I will fight for city that works for you. I will work to be a mayor you will be proud to call your own.”
Watch along here:
The governor, who notably stayed out of the mayoral race, acknowledged Mamdani’s impending victory and said she is looking forward to speaking with him about his plans for the city.
Comparatively, Lieutenant Governor Antonio Delgado, who has launched a rival campaign to Hochul’s left, congratulated Mamdani on a “ bold, hard-fought win.”
Though Mamdani appears poised to seize victory in the Democratic mayoral primary, he will have to wait a while before things become official. As the assemblymember’s final total won’t reach 50 percent tonight, the Board of Elections will move forward with the ranked-choice-voting process, tabulating the next round of voting. Those initial results aren’t expected until next week, and the official results won’t be out until as much as two weeks after that. But with Cuomo conceding, the expectation is now that Mamdani will be the Democratic nominee for mayor.
Ross Barkan writes about what Mamdani’s looming primary victory means for progressive politics in the city and beyond (disclaimer: Mamdani worked on Barkan’s 2018 State Senate campaign):
With nearly all precincts reporting, Mamdani, a 33-year-old socialist assemblyman, holds a 44-36 percent lead over Cuomo, the disgraced former governor, among first place votes. The ranked-choice calculation is suddenly irrelevant: it is highly unlikely Cuomo makes up the deficit on July 1, when the ranked-choice process is finished. He is done in the primary. Unless he attempts a desperate run in the general election on an independent line, Cuomo’s political obituary is written and will have no revisions.
This is a realignment election in the city, and perhaps one of the most significant victories by an unabashedly left-wing candidate in the history of the United States. No one like Mamdani has ever won an election where as many as a million people voted. This is akin to a socialist winning a medium-sized state. There is no real precedent for what happened tonight. Progressives across America will genuflect to him. For Republicans, he is the great new bogeyman.
Read the rest of the piece here.
They’ve emailed this statement from the former governor making it clear he is still considering an independent run:
I called Assemblyman Mamdani to congratulate him on tonight‘s victory. I also thank my team, which did a great job during this campaign. I want to look at all the numbers as they come in and analyze the rank choice voting. I will then consult with my colleagues on what is the best path for me to help the City of New York, as I have already qualified to run for mayor on an independent line in November.
He confirms to the New York Times that, yes, he has conceded the Democratic primary to Zohran Mamdani but hasn’t yet made up his mind about whether to run again in November. There was considerable confusion about this after his speech — which we now know was in fact a concession speech.
Though it’s not yet clear if Cuomo intends to join the general-election field, Mayor Adams signaled that he’s ready for a potential showdown with Mamdani.
On Tuesday night, the mayor appeared to take a shot at both Cuomo and Mamdani, writing, “While some are running from their record, and others have no record, I am proud to run on my record. #JobsAreUpCrimeIsDown #DeliversNeverQuits #Eric2025.”
He followed that up with another post, urging support for his independent campaign:
Ocasio-Cortez, who had her own shocking Election Night victory over a Democratic Establishment candidate back in 2018, congratulated Mamdani following Cuomo’s speech.
The New York Times’ team is going through the precinct totals. Notes Jeff Mays:
Andrew Cuomo, as expected, did well in the Bronx, where he has an 18-point lead with 91 percent of the first ballot vote counted. But Zohran Mamdani was able to match that with an equally large win in Brooklyn, the borough with the most Democratic voters, where he currently holds a 17-point lead over Cuomo. Mamdani is also leading Cuomo in Manhattan and Queens by 5 and 7 points respectively.
Adds Maya King:
Precinct-level data shows that Cuomo appeared to perform better in majority-Black districts, though turnout was lower in broad swaths of them. It could offer a look at the places where Mamdani will need to grow his support ahead of the general election.
Mamdani’s shocking night has prompted a lot of reactions like this:
It’s possible that no one appeared more shocked about Mamdani’s colossal lead than Andrew Cuomo. The former governor sounded more than a little defeated after he took the stage at his Election Night party at the Carpenters Union’s headquarters. He told the room of supporters that he was proud of the race that he and his team had run.
“But tonight was not our night. Tonight was Assemblyman Mandani’s night and he put together a great campaign and he touched young people and inspired them and moved them and got them to come out and vote,” he said.
“He really ran a highly impactful campaign. I called him, I congratulated him. I applaud him sincerely for his effort.”
Though Cuomo appeared to concede the race to Mamdani, he said that his team plans to “look at the numbers” and “make some decisions,” seemingly signaling that he intends to follow the tallying of the remaining votes. The former governor made no mention of his previously stated plans to run on an independent ballot line in November.
NY1 reported afterward that the Cuomo campaign clarified that Cuomo had not conceded the race but would consider his options moving forward. That it even had to do that illustrates how strange it was.
Pure elation:
Should Zohran Mamdani defeat Andrew Cuomo — as it now looks like he will — he also defeats everything Cuomo represents: not just the status quo but a politics of disposability. The former governor and his backers are quick to tout his experience, but they’ve said little about what that experience felt like to millions of vulnerable New Yorkers. Seniors in nursing homes likely died because of his COVID policies. He repeatedly preyed on the women around him. Even now, he offers no ideas, and his campaign had no vitality.
Mamdani offers something different, something more optimistic, but still ideas-oriented. He worked for every vote he won tonight, and he did it by celebrating the city and the working people who make it run. No wonder the Democratic Establishment treated him like such a threat.
Intermittent shrieks here at Zohran Mamdani’s headquarters as each new tally shows Mamdani closing this out in convincing fashion. Spotted so far: David Hogg and Anand Giridharadas.
Comptroller Brad Lander took the stage at his Election Night party in Park Slope shortly after 10 p.m., thanking his family and his campaign team for their support through this race. He opened his remarks by touting Mamdani’s substantial lead over Cuomo.
“The votes are still being counted and the ranked-choice tabulations will take a few days, but this much is clear. Together, we are sending Andrew Cuomo back to the suburbs,” he said to applause.
He continued, “With our help, Zohran Mamdani will be the Democratic nominee for the city of New York.”
Lander also cracked lots of jokes, including a few digs at the New York Times:
Down from 8 to 7 percent, but holding:
Polymarket now has Mamdani with nearly a 99 percent chance of victory
There are already some projected winners in the other races on the ballot.
• Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg is projected to win his reelection bid, receiving 74 percent of the vote over his challenger Patrick Timmins with nearly 75 percent of the vote tallied.
• In the public advocate race, incumbent Jumaane Williams is expected to defeat challenger Queens assemblymember Jenifer Rajkumar after receiving more than 70 percent with nearly half of the expected vote tallied.
• City Councilmember Shahana Hanif appears poised to hold onto her seat in the 39th District, receiving about 70 percent of the vote compared to challenger Maya Kornberg’s 26 percent with nearly 50 percent of the vote in.
• Spectrum News has also projected that Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson and Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso will win their reelection bids.
The incoming primary results confirmed what many speculated all along: It was a two-person race. As Mamdani’s eight-point lead over Cuomo continues to hold with more than 80 percent of the votes tallied, the rest of the field has yet to make a mark in the results.
Lander, who cross-endorsed with Mamdani weeks earlier, has held onto third place and is the only other challenger within double digits. But City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and State Senator Zellnor Myrie, the two additional candidates on the Working Families Party’s mayoral slate, have only cracked 4 percent and 1 percent respectively.
Aides are frantically updating the BOE website in the corner of their Election Night party. One longtime Cuomo adviser just texted simply “Oy.” And then a moment later followed up: “Double Oy”
A first call:
Another:
Mamdani’s eight-point lead on Cuomo is holding:
Also:
Just over 10 percent in the Second District City Council race:
But again, this doesn’t mean he’s on track to win to race tonight, unless he gets more than 50 percent of the vote, which is very unlikely:
Another check in from Carlson:
Speaking just for myself, if I never see another Election Night needle in my entire life, that will be just fine.
But it’s not clear why (i.e., welcome to political betting markets):
The city’s Board of Elections has posted the first tranche of votes, showing Mamdani in the lead as a result of early votes. Mamdani is currently at 43.1 percent with 177,282 votes followed by Cuomo at 34 percent with 139,839 votes and Lander with 13.3 percent with 54,652 votes, per the New York Times.
Poll star Adam Carlson adds:
Jessica Ramos, a lefty state senator who ran for mayor this year and who surprised many of her allies when she endorsed Cuomo, had this to say on the former governor not listing her on his ballot:
I think it’s his first go round with ranked choice voting, and you know what, that’s ok. What matters to me and my family is that we get someone who can lead the city on Day One.
Both Mamdani and Cuomo would make history if ultimately elected in November. Mamdani would become the city’s first Muslim mayor and would be the first person of South Asian descent to hold the office. Cuomo, at age 67, would become the city’s oldest elected mayor in modern history.
Though Mamdani, 33, is currently the youngest candidate, he would not be the youngest to ever hold the office. That record goes to Hugh J. Grant, the city’s 88th mayor, who was inaugurated at the age of 30 in 1889 and served two terms through 1892:
But also:
Our must-follow Instagram account OldNYmag highlighted it earlier today. Young Mamdani said he wanted:
• Books.
• FIFA 2003 and SimCity 3000
computer games.
It’s at the Carpenters Union hall, and right now looks like a great space to shoot a music video.
Though it will be a while yet before we know the identity of the Democratic nominee for mayor, many have already begun looking ahead to the likely chaotic scenario that awaits voters in November.
Due to New York’s allowance of multiple party ballot lines, both Mamdani and Cuomo could potentially run again in the general election if they lose in the primary. Cuomo already announced his creation of the independent Fight and Deliver Party and said that he intends to run on that ballot line regardless of if he’s the Democratic nominee. Mamdani, who led the New York Working Families Party’s slate of mayoral candidates, will likely have the option of running on its party line. However, he has yet to indicate his plans in that scenario.
Cuomo and/or Mamdani will join a field that includes independent candidates Mayor Adams and attorney Jim Walden as well as Curtis Sliwa, the cat-loving Guardian Angels founder and Republican Party nominee.
If you’d like to have a live show to complement our liveblog, this is the one to watch tonight (hosted by our colleague, Errol Louis):
Read Errol’s latest report on the race here.
As of 7:30 p.m.:
There’s no love lost between de Blasio and Andrew Cuomo, who frequently locked horns politically during their respective tenures in City Hall and Albany. Though the former mayor did not reveal his full ranked-choice ballot, it was no surprise that de Blasio left his longtime political opponent off when he hit the polls on Tuesday.
“Change is in the air in NYC today … And also it’s hot as hell out! #DontRankCuomo,” he wrote on X.
Though most of the Democratic candidates took advantage of the city’s early-voting period last week, Cuomo opted to vote in person at the High School of Art and Design early Tuesday morning. The former governor told reporters that he only ranked himself on his ballot, slighting his fellow candidates who both pledged to rank Cuomo second, State Senator Jessica Ramos and former hedge-fund manager Whitney Tilson.
Over in Brooklyn, Mayor Eric Adams cast his ballot in the Democratic primary despite running in the general election as an independent candidate. As to who he voted for, Adams continued his trend of staying out of the primary fight and wrote in a name close to his heart: his own:
Unfortunately, we almost certainly won’t. We will likely have a better idea a week from now, but there might not be a final result for three weeks. Here’s what we will and won’t know tonight, per The City:
The city Board of Elections will release unofficial, first-choice-only votes after the polls close at 9 p.m. on primary night, June 24. Those results will include votes made in person at a polling site, as well as any early mail or absentee ballots that the election board receives and scans by Jun. 20, according to its deputy executive director Vincent Ignizio. …
What we won’t know on election night is the ranked-choice tabulation in which the bottom candidates are eliminated and votes for them redistributed[.]
But there’s at least a slim chance we will learn the winner tonight:
If any candidate wins more than 50% of first-choice votes on election night, they would effectively bypass the full ranked-choice counting process. But with polling showing how close the mayoral race may be, that’s unlikely for that race.
Non-certified unofficial results including the ranked-choice calculations will come out approximately one week from now.
The certified official results will take longer, hopefully in about three weeks, after the city Board of Elections has a chance to include mail-in, absentee, and cured ballots:
Early mail and absentee voters can postmark their ballots for dates up to and including Primary Day. For the votes to count toward the official results, the ballots must be received by the Board of Elections within seven days of that. And there may be lots of mail-in ballots to count. As of June 11, voters requested more than 106,000 mail-in ballots from the city Board of Elections, and the BOE had received about 17% of them back so far, equal to about 18,300 ballots. For a point of comparison, the 2021 mayoral primary was decided by just over 7,000 votes out of about 1 million cast.
David Freedlander wrote earlier today that we should expect a photo finish between Cuomo and Mamdani, though that may not be the end of their rivalry:
If the race does end up being as close as it looks to be this morning, the actual winner of the primary — which won’t be known for days or even weeks — may not matter that much. Cuomo has already announced that he will appear on the ballot for the November general election under the “Fight and Deliver” ballot line, and Mamdani has the support of the Working Families Party, which has its own ballot line.
The real race to be the next mayor of the City of New York, in other words, may have only just begun.
Read the rest of David’s final preview here.
I examined that possibility in a post earlier today:
According to the city’s Board of Elections, 384,338 voters cast their ballots during the nine-day early-voting period. The bulk of those votes came from Manhattan and Brooklyn in what’s believed to be a strong sign for Mamdani. In contrast, numbers in Staten Island and the Bronx, boroughs which would likely favor Cuomo, were low. Throughout his campaign, Cuomo has courted more moderate Black and brown voters, voting blocs that frequently skew older and tend to come out on Election Day. But the sweltering heat could potentially lessen turnout in the highly contested election, which has tightened in recent weeks.
A recent Emerson College poll found Mamdani overtaking Cuomo in the eighth and final round of ranked-choice voting, a shift from months of previous polling that showed the former governor leading the field by a substantial margin. A Marist poll from a week earlier showed Cuomo emerging victorious in a ranked-choice simulation but showed Mamdani making gains among voters since its last survey, a sign of the shifting tides of the race. Recent events leave Cuomo, the longtime front-runner, little room for error. One labor leader whose union endorsed the former governor told Intelligencer’s David Freedlander, “I will be honest, it just looks really bad for Cuomo right now.”
Read the rest here. And yes, it was record-breaking hot today:
