Some Thoughts on the NYC Democratic Primary

As I am sure many of you noted, New York City held the Democratic Primary to nominate a candidate to run for mayor. In recent years, the primary winner has gone on to win the office. This year, the primary drew substantial attention because the disgraced governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, was running for the nomination, and his major rival ended up being an adherent to the Democratic Socialists of America, City Councilman Zohran Mamdani. Mamdani was also noteworthy for being a Muslim running to be mayor of a city with a substantial Jewish population (second in size in the world, only to Tel Aviv) in the context of the ongoing war in Gaza.

Add into the mix that the race was conducted using Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) and it being a prominent off-term election, and that means plenty of eyeballs.

Cuomo was expected to win, but here are the results of the first round via the NYT that caused him to concede. The final results will not be out until Tuesday, but the gap between Mamdani and Cuomo even before the assessment of the rank-ordered preferences of voters, and knowing that a strategic alliance between Mamdani and the third-place finisher, NYC Comptroller Brad Lander, means that Cuomo is mathematically toast, and he knows it.

So, first let me provide some basic thoughts on this race, and then let me move on to talk a bit about primaries, fusion voting, and RCV.

First, some short takes.

1. I am just glad that Andrew Cuomo was repudiated by the voters. If the word “barrage” as linked to “sexual harassment allegations” is part of a story about you, perhaps you ought not be given another leadership role in government. (And shame on anyone who was willing to give him a sideways pass–I’m looking at you, NYT‘s editorial board).
2. It is nice for the now front-runner to be in his 30s rather than his late 70s, as so many prominent politicians have been of late. Even Cuomo at 67 is a marginal improvement, but as I noted in another post recently, retirement isn’t such a bad thing. Note that yet again, Gen X gets skipped.
3. People need to take a breath about the implications of the NYC mayoral races and their national implications. I am old enough to remember when people were carrying on about how Eric Adams and his pro-law-and-order stance were the future of the Democratic Party. Nate Silver, in particular, comes to mind.
   • Can people stop and realize what tends to be the trend for NYC mayors and their popularity?
   • I know it sounds like the mayorality of NYC would be a good launching point for national political aspirants, but might I suggest you Google “Rudy Giuliani” and “Michael Bloomberg”?
4. Mamdani’s DSAness is going to be a challenge, but it also is neither a reason to freak out, nor to assume that this is the future of the Democratic Party (see, again, Eric Adams, Harbinger of Democratic Centrism). Mamdani, should he win the general election, will have a hard time delivering on his promises (and, indeed, it will be interesting to see how he tries to manage expectations in the campaign.
5. Ezra Klein and Chris Hayes had an interesting conversation about how Mamdani conducted this campaign that I think is worth a listen. When I first saw the description, I thought it was going to be a “Is the DSA is the future of the Democrats?” kind of thing, but it wasn’t. I am skeptical about drawing too many conclusions from one campaign, but the discussion of social media v. traditional media was really interesting.

Some other thoughts about the structure of the race.

First, given New York state’s system of fusion voting (i.e., wherein a candidate can be nominated by multiple parties), it is quite possible for a candidate to lose the Democratic nomination and still be on the ballot in November. It was speculated, for example, that if Mamdani lost the Democratic nomination, he still would have been on the ballot as the candidate of the Working Families Party. Indeed, I suspect he may still be the WFP’s candidate as well as the Democratic Party’s (as was the case for Bill de Blasio in 2013 and 2017).

This also allows candidates to run as independents, even if they lost a bid for another party’s nomination. Hence, Cuomo will stay on NYC mayor’s ballot after conceding Democratic primary to Mamdani, sources tell CNN.

Andrew Cuomo will not drop out of the New York City mayoral race by the Friday deadline to remove himself from the general election ballot, sources tell CNN. That leaves in place contingency plans he had established before the Democratic primary to challenge Zohran Mamdani and incumbent Mayor Eric Adams in November.

[…]

Cuomo is calculating that the full city’s electorate would be significantly different from Democratic primary voters who were energized by Mamdani’s focus on affordability and his campaign’s online videos. His camp also believes Mamdani and his policy ideas, from a rent freeze to city-operated grocery stores, will receive increased scrutiny now that Mamdani is positioned to secure a Democratic primary win once ranked-choice votes are allocated next week.

It is not a terrible bet, but given that NYC is overwhelmingly Democratic, I would rather be in Mamdani’s shoes than Cuomo’s. Further, it is worth noting that Mayor Adams is running for re-election as an independent and that Curtis Sliwa of Guardian Angels fame is the Republican nominee. Unlike the Democratic primary, which uses RCV, the general election is won by plurality. As such, Mamdani does not need 50%+1 to win; he just needs to get the largest share of the vote. Having three significant anti-Mamdani choices to split his opposition works to his favor.

Speaking of the RCV of it all, let me turn to this piece from Annie Lowrey in The Atlantic from before the primary: New York Is Not a Democracy, with the subtitle, “Too few voters are choosing the next mayor.”

Let me first and foremost take issue with the article’s title. I will blame an editor and not Lowrey (I will get to her in a second), but this is a terrible title, especially at this moment in US history, wherein democracy is actually under assault. There are certainly legitimate areas of critique of elections in NYC, but none of them would lead anyone who understands the term to assert that it isn’t a democracy.

Really, the title and the tone of the article seem more born out of typical American prejudice against any voting system that slightly deviates from “normal” than it does anything else.

I will agree with the subtitle, at least in part, the story of NYC of late has been one of the primaries choosing the eventual winner because there is no serious two-party competition in NYC. This is a problem across the country, and I agree that primaries are a key component in the non-competitiveness of American politics. I wrote about this not that long ago for Protect Democracy (see here). I will note that I am really talking there about primaries for legislative elections and how they shape party systems.

The fact that the NYC Mayor has, since 2013, been determined by the Democratic primary does show a general lack of party competitiveness. It is also true that NYC partisan politics, like those across the country, have been increasingly driven by the nationalized nature of US party politics. In other words, since voters have very strong partisan voting behavior in federal elections, that has a clear tendency to then affect electoral behavior at the state and local levels.

Put another way: there is no particular reason why we in the US could not have party systems that operate at the state and local levels while different parties function at the national level. And, indeed, you do see, as noted above, some state-level parties in NY. But, they tend to do poorly relative to the Rs and the Ds.

This nationalization of party politics is long-standing and has deepened in recent decades as the parties have fully sorted ideologically and geographically, especially since the 1994 mid-terms. I have written about this phenomenon before (for example, here, here, here, and here). Polarization and the way it tribalizes politics just makes it all worse.

Regardless, the reality is that the citizens of NYC will actually have at least three real options for mayor (Mamdani, Cuomo, and Adams), which is more than a lot of voters get. As such, concerns about NYC’s democracy and whether voters matter seem misplaced, in my view.

But let me get to Lowrey and RCV.

They [Cuomo and Mamdani] are leading a field of a dozen mayoral candidates who will face off in a ranked-choice election for the Democratic primary on June 24. (Because the city has six times as many registered Democrats as registered Republicans, the Democratic primary is generally the de facto mayoral election.) Instead of picking one person to lead the city, voters will rank up to five candidates. This process is wonkish and confusing. But it ensures that similar candidates do not split a constituency. This, proponents of ranked-choice voting say, is the most democratic form of democracy.

Cuomo is likely to get more first-choice votes than any other candidate. But he’s not projected to win an outright majority, meaning that the ranked-choice system would kick in. Candidate after candidate would get knocked out, and their supporters’ votes reapportioned. In the end, the political scion with a multimillion-dollar war chest and blanket name recognition could lose to the young Millennial whom few New Yorkers had heard of as of last year. One new survey, by Data for Progress, shows Cuomo ultimately defeating Mamdani by two points, within the margin of error. Another poll shows Mamdani with more support than Cuomo.

Seeing a no-name upstart attempt to upset a brand-name heavyweight is thrilling. But the system has warped the political calculus of the mayoral campaign. Candidates who might have dropped out are staying in. Candidates who might be attacking one another on their platforms or records are instead considering cross-endorsing. Voters used to choosing one contender are plotting out how to rank their choices. Moreover, they are doing so in a closed primary held in the June of an odd year, meaning most city residents will not show up at the polls anyway. If this is democracy, it’s a funny form of it.

This is just an odd critique.

To make a list of responses from the paragraph.

1. Voters have more choices if more candidates are on the ballot (that is a good thing).
2. Coalition building, because the system rewards cooperation (that is a good thing).
3. That voters need to be strategic and having the think through their options is also a good thing
4. The fact that the primary likely picks the winner is a problem with primaries, especially in off-cycle years. I agree with this, but they have nothing to do with RCV.

I am not a big proponent of RCV for legislative elections, because using it in single-seat districts ignores that the usage of single-seat districts is the major flaw in our system. I also am not convinced it produces more moderate outcomes, as proponents often claim. I am, however, fully in favor of RCV for single-office elections like we see here (for both primaries and the general election). It allows for the maximal number of votes to count, and I think that the encouragement of strategic alliances helps provide more information to voters who can then make even more well-informed decisions. Indeed, this is especially true in a primary wherein there are no party labels to help provide even basic signals to voters.

Without ranked-choice voting, Cuomo would probably steamroll his competition. With ranked-choice voting, Mamdani could defeat him. In Data for Progress’s recent poll, 37 percent of voters ranked Cuomo first, and 31 percent ranked Mamdani first. But as the weakest candidates were knocked out and their votes redistributed, Mamdani closed the gap. Other simulations show Cuomo with a greater margin of victory, but the general pattern is the same.

Setting aside any questions of what the best outcome would be in terms of the candidates, this is a weird position for Lowrey to take. If she really is concerned, as the subtitle of the piece notes (again, probably written by an editor), that too few voters are choosing the mayor, then having the primary be decided by plurality would exacerbate that problem.

Again, this suggests a prejudice against even modest deviations from “normal” voting.

It also seems worth noting that Mamdani won a clear plurality in the first round, which undercuts the notion that only RCV voodoo gave him a chance (granted, RCV did influence how he campaigned).

Ranked-choice voting might better reflect voter preferences, but it is chaotic, requiring extra strategizing by both candidates and voters. To keep Cuomo out of Gracie Mansion, some candidates have said that they are contemplating cross-endorsing Mamdani, telling their supporters to rank them first and him second. Unions and political groups are endorsing multiple candidates; many are pushing a simple “Don’t rank Cuomo” message. (Ramos, an exception, has thrown her support behind Cuomo while remaining in the race, saying he has “experience, toughness, and the knowledge to lead New York.”)

This is just a weird critique to me. If RCV better reflects voter preferences, then that strikes me as an unvarnished good. I also think that “chaotic” is simply the wrong word. It is definitely more complex than simple plurality voting, but it is not chaotic. Again, having candidates behave strategically and provide more information to voters is a good thing, not a chaotic one.

I am not unsympathetic to the following, at least to a point.

The system demands more from voters. Instead of choosing a single candidate, voters have to figure out what they think about every candidate, then produce an ordinal ranking on the basis of their own feelings and calculations about who seems likeliest to win. It’s a lot of work, and not work that normal people seem to relish. Ranked-choice voting might also diminish somevoters’ influence. In 2021, Black, Latino, and Asian voters were less likely than non-Latino white voters to rank a full slate of candidates, in effect curtailing their electoral power.

I think that there is something to the idea that the more a system demands of voters, the more some voters get left behind. Time, in and of itself, is a resource that is not evenly distributed across the population, a point well made by political scientist Kevin J. Elliott in Democracy for Busy People (a book I would recommend). Having said that, I don’t think it is all that hard for people to learn which candidates they prefer, especially when RCV incentivizes candidates to make themselves known since they have a greater chance of winning than they would in a plurality-based contest as well as having the potential to have an effect on the racem even if they may lose in ways, again, that would not obtain if it was a straightforward plurality-based contest.

Lowrey and I agree on this, however, although the issue of the outsized role of the primaries should be the main focus of her article, not RCV.

The fact that many elections are decided in primaries is its own problem, and a big one. In 2021, just one in 10 New York City residents voted in the June election. Eric Adams became mayor having been ranked first by only 289,403 people in a city of more than 8 million.

Although she missed the mark as it pertained to this election. And she fails to see how RCV changes the importance of the big name, at least in this case.

The prominence of the primary helps big-name candidates and incumbents. Holding elections in off years skews races to the right, because conservative voters are more likely to show up at odd times.

Of course, the fact that the big name was tainted was part of the issue. And clearly, the electorate for the primary was not more conservative.

She concludes as follows, and she at least got this prediction (or, really, quasi-prediction) right.

Whether Cuomo or Mamdani wins this month, New Yorkers might have another chance to decide between them. After this annoyingly chaotic primary, we could have an annoyingly chaotic election: If Mamdani loses, he might run in the general on the Working Families Party ticket. If Cuomo loses, he might run in the general as an independent, as will the disgraced incumbent, Eric Adams. At least, in that election, voters won’t be asked to rank their favorite, just to pick one.

But, man, she does like calling things “chaotic.” I will grant that I was not in NYC and maybe she was, but I have been watching elections near and far for a long time, and this one did not appear especially chaotic from my vantage point. It certainly was more dynamic with more moving parts, including actual competition between Mamdani and Cuomo. That’s a good thing!

I will end by noting that her happiness with only one choice in the general is misplaced. Why a system that would, in her own words as quoted above, “better reflect voter preferences,” be seen as inferior to a plurality winner is beyond me. Sure, it is simpler, but simpler is not always better.