Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams appeared to take a fragile lead Tuesday in New York City's Democratic mayoral primary, but it could be weeks before it becomes clear who is actually on top in the first citywide election to use ranked-choice voting.
Former presidential candidate Andrew Yang conceded about two hours after polls closed, because he was far behind in early returns. Both Adams and Yang had built strong support among various Hassidic courts in the city during the campaign.
Jewish voters make up 20% of the city's potential Democratic voters, although it remains to be seen if they will be the decisive bloc. Yang, who was considered a pro-Israel candidate, had successfully received endorsements from several ultra-Orthodox groups prior to the vote. He has recently voiced his opposition to boycott efforts against the Jewish state
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As ballot counting began Tuesday, a plurality of Democrats ranked Adams as their first choice in the race. It was tough to tell, though, whether that lead would hold. As many as 207,500 absentee ballots remained to be counted, and voters' full rankings of the candidates have yet to be taken into account. It could be July before a winner emerges in the Democratic contest.
Adams, a former police captain who co-founded a leadership group for Black officers, was leading former city sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia and former de Blasio administration lawyer Maya Wiley.
Nevertheless, in the Democratic contest, the initial picture could be misleading. After polls closed at 9 p.m., New York City's Board of Elections began releasing results of votes cast in person, but the returns focused on who candidates ranked as their first choice.
The ranked-choice system, approved for use in NYC primaries and special elections by referendum in 2019, allowed voters to rank up to five candidates on their ballot.
Vote tabulation is then done in computerized rounds, with the person in last place getting eliminated each round, and ballots cast for that person getting redistributed to the surviving candidates based on voter rankings. That process continues until only two candidates are left. The one with the most votes wins.
It won't be until June 29 that the Board of Elections performs a tally of those votes using the new system. It won't include any absentee ballots in its analysis until July 6, making any count before then potentially unreliable.
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