More than 735,000 New Yorkers cast ballots during the nine days of early voting in this year’s pivotal mayoral race, a staggering turnout that puts the contest on track to potentially generate some of the highest local election turnout in modern city history.
According to tabulations released by the Board of Elections after polls closed citywide at 5 p.m. Sunday, 735,317 residents cast ballots in the mayoral contest since the Oct. 25 start of early voting. That figure doesn’t include tens of thousands of absentee ballots also cast early.
Polling sites will be closed Monday before they reopen for Tuesday’s Election Day, when hundreds of thousands more New Yorkers are expected to come out for what’s widely seen as one of the most consequential mayoral races in decades.
For years, general mayoral elections in New York City typically aren’t especially competitive and draw around 1 million votes total. This year, though, Jerry Skurnik, a veteran New York election expert, told the Daily News he believes turnout in Tuesday’s election could surpass 2 million votes.
“It definitely looks like it’s going to be way over a million and a half at least,” Skurnik said.
If turnout gets even close to 2 million, the 2025 mayoral race will secure a prominent spot in the history books.
The 1965 mayoral election, which drew 2.6 million votes, is seen as the highest turnout race for City Hall in recent Big Apple memory.
Gardiner Anderson / New York Daily News
On the final day of early voting, voters wait on long lines at a polling site in Red Hook, Brooklyn. (Gardiner Anderson / New York Daily News)
The dynamics of that race share similarities with this one, as there was no incumbent running after three-term Mayor Robert Wagner opted to not seek reelection. Without Wagner in the race, Republican and Liberal Party nominee John Lindsay, a young, charismatic congressman who ran a campaign promising sweeping change, won the 1965 general election in a three-way race against Democrat Abe Beame and Conservative Party candidate William Buckley.
This time around, incumbent Mayor Adams has abandoned his reelection bid, bowing out of the race in late September after polling dead last amid continued controversy surrounding his federal corruption indictment.
Meantime, Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, a state Assembly member who would at 34 become the youngest mayor in modern New York history if elected, has for months polled as the favorite to win Tuesday’s election. He’s facing off against independent Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa.
Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist University Institute for Public Opinion who has overseen polling of the race, said the 2025 mayoral election has attracted so much enthusiasm and turnout because of the drastically different options on display in the candidates.
“You have three candidates tapping into three very different elements of the city. It’s not at all similar candidates with similar messages. You have different messages, different ages, different religions even,” Miringoff said.
President Trump’s threats to punish New York with federal funding cuts and other repercussions if the democratic socialist Mamdani wins has drawn additional attention to the race, Miringoff argued.
“And there’s not a shy person on the ballot,” he added.
The largest turnout day for early voting was Sunday, when 151,212 residents cast ballots, tabulations show.
Barry Williams, Theodore Parisienne / New York Daily News
Mayoral candidates Curtis Sliwa, Andrew Cuomo and Zohran Mamdani. (Barry Williams, Theodore Parisienne / New York Daily News)
The 2025 mayoral race has been a case study in clashing ideological and political views.
Mamdani, who could become the city’s first Muslim mayor, has campaigned on an unabashed progressive, left-wing platform that includes promises to freeze the rent for stabilized tenants, drastically expand subsidized childcare and make public buses free — and pay for it all by raising taxes on corporations and the city’s wealthiest residents.
Cuomo, an ex-governor who resigned as the state’s top official in 2021 amid sexual and professional misconduct accusations he now denies, has portrayed Mamdani’s plans as unrealistic while also making the case it’d be dangerous to put him in charge of the city due to his lack of executive experience.
For his part, Cuomo has vowed he’d as mayor seek to drive down costs of living by using more moderate policy prescriptions, like building more housing to help contain rents and only making public transit free for New Yorkers at the very bottom of the income scale. Cuomo has gained some ground on Mamdani in the polls in recent weeks, though most surveys have projected the Democratic nominee beating the ex-gov by double digits.
Andrew Julien / New York Daily News
On the final day of early voting, voters wait on long lines outside the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. (Andrew Julien / New York Daily News)
Concerned Mamdani’s tax-and-spend agenda could drive business out of New York, local corporate leaders and billionaires have pumped tens of millions of dollars into pro-Cuomo super PACs pushing out ads that echo the sentiment about the Democratic nominee being dangerous.
Sliwa, who has consistently placed third in polls of the race, argues both Mamdani and Cuomo are cut from the same Democratic Party cloth and that the city needs a Republican in charge to enact meaningful change.
Sliwa’s insistence on staying in the race despite his relatively poor showing in the polls has prompted Cuomo to try to make a play for his supporters, urging them to not “waste” their vote on the Republican nominee and back him as the anti-Mamdani candidate instead.
Defend NYC, one of the pro-Cuomo super PACs, sought to amplify that pitch last week by dropping $1 million on a text message blast to local registered Republicans pleading with them to not vote for Sliwa.
