Zohran Mamdani has won the race for New York City mayor, according to Decision Desk HQ, ushering in a new era of progressive politics in the city and reigniting the debate over the Democratic Party’s future.
Mamdani, a 34-year-old democratic socialist, is poised to become the first millennial and first Muslim to lead New York City, after a campaign that pulled off one of the most stunning political upsets in recent memory. He defeated former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who mounted a long-shot independent bid after losing to Mamdani in the Democratic primary, and Republican Curtis Sliwa in his bid to succeed Mayor Eric Adams.
Mamdani focused heavily on affordability, pledging to freeze rent, establish city-owned grocery stores and make buses free for riders. He quickly became a progressive icon as well as a polarizing figure within the party over his positions, so much so that it divided prominent New York Democratic leadership over whether to endorse him.
NYC has rank choice??
Anyone know if Cuomo would have won without ranked choice? That’s possible to tell right, by just counting up first picks?
NYC had ranked choice in the primaries, but honestly I don’t think it mattered this time because as far as I could tell, Mamdani was the only vaguely credible candidate from the onset. The field was otherwise pretty broken by the Eric Adams mess and Cuomo trying to stage a political comeback despite being at his best times merely an ‘acceptable’ politician and then suffering scandal.
Mamdani also won a plurality of the total votes so even by FPTP standards Mamdani won.
I 100% agree though that having a Ranked Choice style ballot opened up the door for someone like Mamdani though and would do the same for other progressives.
I think the argument would be that the voter strategy changes and they vote their preference more confidently instead of going all prisoner’s dilemma and trying to vote the person that other people will vote for that is most acceptable. So a large volume of people vote for their second choice and never express their true preference in a FPTP system.
However, I do think he would have carried a FPTP system as well, the other candidates were all pretty terrible, and everyone 100% knew the Republican candidate was never going to matter so they didn’t even have to sweat the ‘who can pull the center’ thinking.
If it was any other candidates then I feel it probably would have been closer. The establishment was off their rockers thinking they could run Cuomo again, especially up against Mamdani.
I agree with you, the RCV and FPTP can get a bit of prisoner’s dilemma going. I like STAR or Ranked Robin voting more for that reason since you can vote all of your favorite options with equal weight. So you can have 2+ first place votes and so on.