University of Kwazulu-Natal

What Past Elections Tell Us About The New York City Mayoral Race

Bonisiwe Shabane
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what past elections tell us about the new york city mayoral race

Throughout this piece, precincts are grouped into NTAs using representative points. Turnout analysis relied on the precinct-level voter registration figures published by the New York State Board of Elections published before the primary, which are from February 2021 and 2025. The number of voters in a precinct is the total number of inactive and active voters enrolled with the Democratic Party in that precinct. New York City holds closed primaries, so anyone registered with a different party could not cast a ballot in the Democratic mayoral primary, but inactive registered Democrats may vote with affidavit ballots. Income analysis used census block populations from the 2020 decennial census to apportion 2025 precinct-level results to census tracts. We then intersected precinct polygons with census blocks, computed each block piece’s share of its parent block (population where available, otherwise area), and normalized those shares to create weights to roll precincts into tracts.

Precincts without block overlaps were assigned to the tract containing their point-on-surface, falling back to the nearest tract if needed. We then multiplied candidates’ precinct-level vote totals by these weights and summed to the tract level, verifying that citywide totals were preserved. Finally, we joined tract-level results to the 2023 five-year American Community Survey estimates to obtain tract-level vote and median household income. The mayor of New York City is elected in early November every four years, in the year immediately following a United States presidential election year, and takes office at the beginning of the following... New York City, which elects the mayor as its chief executive, consists of the five boroughs (Manhattan, The Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island), which consolidated to form "Greater" New York on January 1,... The consolidated city's first mayor, Robert A.

Van Wyck, was elected with other municipal officers in November 1897. Mayoral elections previously had been held since 1834 by the City of Brooklyn and the smaller, unconsolidated City of New York (Manhattan, later expanded into the Bronx). Eric Adams took office 12:01 AM on January 1, 2022, at a private swearing-in, followed by a public ceremony later in the day. He follows Bill de Blasio, who served two consecutive terms after being elected in 2013 and for a second term in 2017. Zohran Mamdani will be sworn in on January 1, 2026, after winning the 2025 mayoral election. Direct elections to the mayoralty of the unconsolidated City of New York began in 1834 for a term of one year, extended to two years after 1849.

The 1897 Charter of the consolidated City stipulated that the mayor was to be elected for a single four-year term. In 1901, the term halved to two years, with no restrictions on reelection. In 1905, the term was extended to four years once again. (Mayors Fiorello La Guardia, Robert F. Wagner Jr. and Ed Koch were later able to serve for twelve years each.)[1] In 1993, the voters approved a two-term (eight-year) limit, and reconfirmed this limit when the issue was submitted to referendum in 1996.

In 2008, the New York City Council voted to change the two-term limit to three terms (without submitting the issue to the voters).[2] Legal challenges to the council's action were rejected by Federal courts... Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani defeated former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who ran as a third-party candidate, after also defeating Cuomo in a June primary. Republican Curtis Sliwa was also in the race. Incumbent Mayor Eric Adams was also running as a third-party hopeful but dropped out of the race this fall, though his name still appeared on ballots. The expected vote is the total number of votes that are expected in a given race once all votes are counted.

This number is an estimate and is based on several different factors, including information on the number of votes cast early as well as information provided to our vote reporters on Election Day from... The figure can change as NBC News gathers new information. Source: Vote data via the Associated Press. Projections by the NBC News Decision Desk. The contest features three leading candidates: Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, a Democrat; former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat running as an independent; and Curtis Sliwa, a Republican.

Read more See precinct-level election results from the mayoral race. New York City Public Advocate race called Source: Election results and race calls are from The Associated Press.By The New York Times election results team: Michael Andre, Matthew Bloch, Lily Boyce, Irineo Cabreros, Nico Chilla, Nate Cohn, Annie Daniel, Saurabh Datar,... Lee, Alex Lemonides, Ilana Marcus, Alicia Parlapiano, Dan Simmons-Ritchie, Caroline Soler, Charlie Smart, Jonah Smith, Urvashi Uberoy and Christine Zhang. Additional contributions by Jeff Adelson, Camille Baker, Felice Belman, Anna Bialas, Sarah Cahalan, Nick Corasaniti, Avery Dews, David Goodman, Katherine Oung, Amy Qin, Campbell Robertson, Laurel Rosenhall, Mitch Smith and Jessica White.

Edited by Wilson Andrews, Lindsey Rogers Cook, William P. Davis, Amy Hughes, Ben Koski and Allison McCartney. Source: Election results and race calls are from The Associated Press. By Maya Sweedler And Humera Lodhi, The Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — Andrew Cuomo and Eric Adams have won support from the same coalition of voters in their bids to lead New York City, setting them on a collision course that could... Mamdani, a state Assembly member, won the Democratic nomination for mayor in June, backed by a new coalition of voters.

Cuomo, the former New York governor, and Adams, the incumbent mayor, are running as independents in the Nov. 4 election. Republican Curtis Sliwa is running for the second time, after winning just over one-quarter of the vote in the 2021 general election. To understand the coalitions these candidates have built, The Associated Press examined precinct-level results from the last two Democratic mayoral primaries. Adams skipped the Democratic primary this year, while Cuomo finished almost 13 percentage points behind Mamdani once ranked-choice tabulations were run. Sliwa ran unopposed in 2025.

Should Cuomo and Adams remain in the race, the AP analysis suggests Mamdami could have a clearer path to victory, assuming recent voting patterns repeat themselves. Sliwa, who remains a long shot in the heavily Democratic city, could also draw votes away from Cuomo and Adams — the more moderate candidates — further helping Mamdani. For the last half century, in good times and bad, perceptions of public safety have played a central role in shaping the race to win City Hall. In 1977, public safety became the decisive issue in a New York City mayoral election for the first time — and there is a strong case that has remained the case in every seriously... After more than 40 years of a liberal-labor-minority coalition dominating city politics, 1977 was also the election when a more conservative coalition helped win City Hall for Ed Koch. While history may not repeat itself, it does rhyme.

That’s why it is essential to understand the 1977 election, and the new era it began in New York City politics, in order to understand the 2025 mayoral race. It is easy to tick off the similarities between the 1977 race and today. A weakened incumbent due to the fiscal crisis, the state’s takeover of the city’s finances and a federal SEC investigation all helped to shape the 1977 election. A weakened incumbent due to a corruption crisis, the threat of a governor using her power to remove the mayor from office and a federal criminal investigation have defined the 2025 race so far. To be clear, New York is a very different city than it was in 1977. Today, there are 1.4 million more New Yorkers.

In 1977, the city was in the middle of a decade during which it lost more than 10% of its residents. Non-Latino whites made up 53% of the population back then, compared to 31% in 2024. Originally developed as a joint project of the Center for Urban Research at the Graduate Center / CUNY with the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and the Center for Community and Ethnic Media The Election Atlas has been updated with the following information & maps: CUNY's NYC Election Atlas was created to focus on maps and demographic analysis to provide a backdrop for the 2013 mayoral election, the first open mayoral election (no incumbent) in more than a decade. The Center for Urban Research at the CUNY Graduate Center has mapped the results from most of the election in New York City since then, but our Atlas has only been updated sporadically after...

Contact the CUNY Mapping Service if you would like access to our maps of the other elections not available via the Atlas. Thank you! The 2013 mayoral election in New York City is the first in more than a decade with no sitting mayor as a candidate, after Mayor Michael Bloomberg's three-term, 12-year incumbency. There are seven declared Democratic candidates, three Republican candidates, one Independence candidate, and several more running on other party lines (as of the July 15 filing with the NYC Campaign Finance Board). As the candidates criss-cross the city and participate in forums and debates, media organizations and others hope to understand who are the city's potential — and likely — voters and how the candidates may... Voters headed to the polls in states across the U.S.

on Tuesday — and Democrats came out victorious. In New York City, voters elected Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old state Assembly member and democratic socialist, as their next mayor. Mamdani defeated former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who joined the race as an independent after losing in the Democratic primary. Democrats also won both of the governor’s races that were on the ballot. Abigail Spanberger, a former U.S.

representative, was elected in Virginia to replace outgoing Republican Glenn Youngkin. She will become the state’s first female governor. Mikie Sherrill comfortably won the governor’s race in New Jersey, keeping the state under Democratic control. Democrats also secured what could prove to be their most important win in California, where voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 50 — a ballot measure that will allow them to redraw the state’s congressional districts... Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed the initiative in response to Republican redistricting efforts in Texas and other red states.

The state’s proposed new map is expected to give Democrats five additional members in the House of Representatives, which could play a big role in determining which party holds the majority after next year’s... Read a recap of Tuesday's election events in our blog below. Key Democrats in Congress said Wednesday that the party's victories in races across the country last night were a sign that their shutdown strategy is working and it would be a mistake to allow...

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