Mayoral Spew: Zohran Mamdani Won (Officially, Decisively)

State of the Race in Way More Than 30 Seconds: 

Not that we needed it, but today, we got definitive proof today that State Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, for lack of a better term, completely kicked the shit out of former Governor Andrew Cuomo. What was an eight-point apparent victory on primary night has now stretched into a 12-point win in the Board of Election's final ranked-choice voting results. Mamdani essentially defeated Cuomo in the second round, after the mass elimination of all the candidates trailing behind Cuomo following the first round (they were all eliminated at once because even if all of their voters had ranked Cuomo as their second choice, that would still not be enough to close the gap between Mamdani and Cuomo, meaning the race was over). While it's safe to assume that Mamdani's increased margin of victory after RCV came in large part due to his cross-endorsement with Comptroller Brad Lander and running in alliance with other non-Cuomo candidates, we won't know how exactly all the votes transferred from particular candidates to another until mid-July. But what we do know is that voters who ranked anyone besides Mamdani or Cuomo number one were almost twice as likely to rank Mamdani higher elsewhere on their ballot than Cuomo (if they ranked Cuomo at all). 

Mamdani won by changing the demographics of who voted. Cuomo actually got more votes this year than Eric Adams did in 2021, but Mamdani received over 117,000 more votes than Cuomo. Cuomo hit his numbers, but the game was different this time. 

And now we're on to the general—Cuomo will be on the ballot, but as to whether that means he's actually running, his campaign says he's still "determining next steps." Eric Adams is running as an independent, and has wasted no time in trying to paint Mamdani as an antisemite. Jim Walden (if you don't know, get ready) is running. Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa is running. And Mamdani has spent the week since his primary win building support among local electeds and unions. He's also been targeted by unhinged Islamophobic rants from Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and beyond. The business community has been going through every stage of grief imaginable. 

There's a small chance we'll have a competitive general election race in November, but at this point, Mamdani, the Democratic nominee in the race, is heavily favored.