Early voting in NYC's 2025 elections more than doubles 2021 turnout
Turnout is off to a strong start in New York City's local 2025 elections, as more than 66,000 residents cast ballots during the first two days of early voting over the weekend — more than doubling the levels from the 2021 cycle.
According to unofficial tabulations released by the city Board of Elections, 66,361 residents voted on Saturday and Sunday, more than twice the 32,032 New Yorkers who participated in the first two days of early voting during the city's 2021 municipal elections.
Jerry Skurnik, a veteran New York political consultant specializing in voter turnout, cautioned against reading too much into which of the candidates in the high-stakes 2025 Democratic mayoral primary could benefit from the uptick in early voting.
'There could be a number of reasons why the turnout is higher. In 2021, there were still a lot of people not going out to the polls because of COVID, a lot of people were doing absentee that year, myself included, so that could be a factor,' Skurnik said.
New Yorkers will be able to continue to early vote every day through Sunday. Polls then close on June 23 before they reopen for primary day on June 24.
The top item on the June 24 ballot is the Democratic mayoral primary that former Gov. Andrew Cuomo is polling as the favorite to win.
With polls open, Cuomo and the other mayoral candidates spent the weekend and Monday traversing the five boroughs for get-out-the-vote efforts.
Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist who has consistently polled as the runner-up candidate to Cuomo in polls, held a major rally at Terminal 5 in Manhattan Saturday night with New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other high-profile supporters.
'In a world and a nation that is crying to end the gerontocracy of our leadership, that wants to see a new day, that wants to see a new generation ascend, it is unconscionable to send Andrew Cuomo to Gracie Mansion,' Ocasio-Cortez, who has endorsed Mamdani as her No. 1 pick, told the crowd of more than 2,500 supporters.
Meantime, Cuomo, who resigned as governor in 2021 amid sexual misconduct and pandemic mismanagement accusations he denies, was set to hold a get-out-the-vote rally Monday afternoon in Midtown Manhattan with members of the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, a powerful union that has endorsed his run and is spending independently on efforts to drive turnout for him.
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