With New York's ranked voting, most voters knew exactly what they were doing.
After Anne and I voted early in the New York Democratic primary last June we walked out of John Jay High School with a woman who said she didn’t know she could vote for more than one person in the ranked voting election.
We wondered how she did not know this? We also wondered if she was typical. Was ranked voting just too complicated for the voter to understand?
And would it help or hurt our candidate, Zohran Mandarin?
Looking at the results from June 24th, it seems most New York primary voters understood it pretty well.
It helped Mamdani win by double digits in the final calculations.
The Don’t Rank Evil Andrew for Mayor (DREAM) campaign worked exceeding well.
All of the leading progressives reminded voters to vote for five candidates but not to include Cuomo on their ballots.
Voters got it.
70% did not include Cuomo’s name on their ballots.
Key was Zohran Mamdani and Brad Lander cross endorsing each other.
New York City Comptroller Brad Lander’s cross endorsement of Mamdani resulted in Mamdani receiving another 85,000 votes when Lander was eliminated.
Nearly 60% of all voters included Mamdani somewhere on their ranked-choice ballot, with Lander, Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, and Cuomo coming in second.
Roughly 78% of primary voters took advantage of ranked-choice voting and ranked more than one candidate, but 37% of Cuomo voters instead “bullet voted,” meaning they only ranked him.
But the way, although Hakeem Jeffries has yet to endorse the Democratic nominee, Mamdani won House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ Brooklyn-based district with 46% of the vote in the first round and 56% in the final round.
November’s election which, as of now, will include current mayor Eric Adams, Cuomo, Republican and perennial candidate Curtis Sliwa along with primary winner Mamdani, will not offer ranked voting.
Nothing should be taken for granted.
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