The Associated Press had declared Brooklyn Borough president Eric Adams the winner of the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City Tuesday, after nearly all absentee ballots were counted.
The Brooklyn Borough president led Kathryn Garcia by a little more than 8,400 votes, or about 1 percentage point, after election officials finished tallying the results under the city’s ranked choice voting system. Election officials were still scrutinizing a few thousand absentee ballots to determine if they are valid. But there weren’t enough to alter the outcome.
“While there are still some small amounts of votes to be counted, the results are clear, an historic, diverse, five-borough coalition led by working class New Yorkers has led us to victory in the Democratic primary for Mayor of New York City,” Adams said in a statement.
Ranked choice voting is new to New York’s mayoral primary this year after a 2019 ballot initiative approved the new system, which lets voters select up to five choices.
Under the system, voters ranked up to five candidates for mayor in order of preference.
Candidates with too few votes to win were eliminated and ballots cast for them redistributed to the surviving contenders, based on the voter preference, until only two candidates were left.
Because no candidate won a majority of first choice votes, a series of elimination rounds redistributing votes was initiated. The person with the most votes after two candidates remained is the winner.
After all is said and done, Adams was ranked ahead of Garcia on 43% of the total votes counted, while Garcia was ranked ahead of Adams on 42%. Fifteen percent of voters didn’t rank either candidate.
Adams is the heavy favorite to win the November general election and would be the city’s second Black mayor.
