NYC Mayoral Primary Results: Eric Adams Holds Early Lead

NEW YORK CITY — An exuberant Eric Adams acknowledged the Democratic mayoral primary is far from over late Tuesday.

The new reality of ranked-choice voting means rounds of second- and third-choice ballots, and perhaps more, need to be counted before a winner is declared, Adams told supporters as results streamed in.

"But there's something else we know: that New York City said our first choice is Eric Adams," he said.

Adams held 30.98 percent of first-choice votes Tuesday as of 11:50 p.m., according to the city's Board of Elections.

About 90 percent of precinct scanners were reported in at that point.

The results showed Adams didn't have a clear majority of first-choice votes, giving Maya Wiley and Kathryn Garcia — who had 21.96 percent and 20.25 percent of votes, respectively — a fighting chance to gain the lead as voters' other choices are counted starting June 28.

But at least one candidate looked at the results and conceded.

"I am not going to be the next mayor of New York City based on the numbers coming in tonight," Andrew Yang said.

While final results remain up in the air, the entire mayoral field is still much narrower than the nearly 40 candidates who originally sought Gracie Mansion.

Weeks of campaigning winnowed the field to eight top-tier Democratic candidates — Eric Adams, Shaun Donovan, Kathryn Garcia, Raymond J. McGuire, Dianne Morales, Scott Stringer, Maya Wiley and Andrew Yang.

Yang captured the most attention and support in the primary's early days, but Adams — a former NYPD captain — crept up in the polls as public safety became a prevalent issue in the campaign.

Polls in the campaign's final days generally showed Adams in the lead, with some combination of Garcia, Wiley and Yang not far behind.

With Yang out, the contest through ranked-choice voting counts likely will be a race between Adams, Garcia and Wiley.

Wiley told her supporters that roughly 50 percent of ranked-choice ballots need to be counted. And Garcia pressed for patience.

“To be quite honest, we’re not going to know a whole lot more tonight than we know now,” Garcia said. “That it’s going to come down to opening up those ballots and making sure that every single New Yorkers’ voice is heard.”

Adams, for his part, gave what amounted to a victory speech. He promised New Yorkers a "different city."

What happens next is something New Yorkers haven't yet experienced — potentially weeks of successive rounds of ranked-choice counts.

Harlem voter Maria Meyer is likely not alone among New Yorkers in being unclear about the wait to come.

"I still don't fully understand the process of how the winner will work," Meyer said. "But I'm on board with the idea."

The ranked choice system allowed voters like Meyer 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, the Associated Press reported.

That process continues until only two candidates are left. The one with the most votes wins.

The Board of Elections won't perform a ranked-choice tally until June 29. And it won’t include any absentee ballots in its analysis until July 6, making any count before then potentially unreliable, as reported by the Associated Press.

More than 87,000 absentee ballots had been received by the city as of Monday, and more are expected to arrive in the mail in coming days.

Things were much clearer in the two-candidate Republican primary. Curtis Sliwa is the projected winner with 71.9 percent of the vote, according to NY1.

Patch writer Sarah Belle Lin contributed to this report.