Eric Adams Takes Comfortable Lead in NYC Mayoral Primary as Wiley, Garcia Fight for Second Place

As of early Wednesday morning, New York City mayoral candidate Eric Adams leads the Democratic primary contest by a comfortable ten-point margin, but remains short of outright victory thanks to the delays in ballot-counting caused by the city’s adoption of ranked-choice voting.

With 84 percent of ballots counted, Adams has secured 31.7 percent of the vote; Maya Wiley, former counsel to mayor Bill de Blasio, follows with 22.3 percent; former New York City Sanitation Department commissioner Kathryn Garcia has 19.5 percent. Businessman and former presidential candidate Andrew Yang became the first candidate to drop out late Tuesday after securing just 11.7 percent of the vote.

Adams, who currently serves as Brooklyn borough president, has secured the plurality of the vote in four out of five boroughs, including Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island.

Yang, who was considered a frontrunner on the campaign trail for many months thanks to his strong name-ID, conceded defeat late Tuesday night, putting an end to his second appearance on the political scene, after his Democratic presidential bid in 2020.

“You know I am a numbers guy…and I am not going to be the next mayor of New York City,” Yang told a group of supporters on Tuesday. Yang said he would be willing to work in the administration of whoever is elected mayor.

The winner of the Democratic primary is generally expected to win New York’s mayoral race given the strong Democratic majority. New York City is home to 3.7 million registered Democrats, 1.08 million Independents, and about 566,000 Republicans as of February 2021.

The counting of ranked-choice ballots is expected to slow the release of a final tally, as is the counting of absentee ballots, which are expected to constitute roughly 15 to 20 percent of the total ballots and can be submitted as late as ten days after Election Day.