When will we know the NYC mayoral primary election winner?

CBS News

20-06-2025

New York City voters are casting their ballots in the primary election for a Democratic mayoral nominee, and many are wondering when we will know who won -- and how ranked choice voting will impact the results, and their timing.
Early voting wraps up this weekend, and Election Day is next Tuesday, June 24.
Are we going to get results on primary night?
We will see unofficial first choice results after polls close at 9 p.m., but that's not the end of the story, considering ranked choice voting.
Those unofficial first choice results will include those marked as first choice from early voting, Election Day, and valid mail-in ballots.
If, however, no candidate goes over 50% of the vote - and considering the large number of candidates running in this race, that seems very likely - we will then move into ranked choice elimination rounds.
Under the system, the candidate who got the fewest first-round votes will then be eliminated, and voters who ranked that candidate first on their ballots will then have their second choice candidate counted.
That process will then repeat until one candidate exceeds 50% of the vote.
So when will we get a clear picture of the winner?
We will likely start to get a clearer picture of the winner before official results are certified.
Preliminary, non-certified results will come out a week after the election.
We can then expect weekly reports, as elimination rounds are conducted. The entire process could take up to several weeks. In the last mayoral primary -- the first citywide election with ranked choice voting -- the final results were certified nearly a month after the election..
At a certain point, a presumed winner may start to emerge. For example, if a candidate is approaching 50% of the vote, and the gap between that candidate's unofficial numbers and their nearest competitor is greater than the number of ballots still needing to be counted, then that person will almost certainly become the winner.
The final, certified results still won't come out until all ballots are counted, including early voting, mail-in, absentee, military, affidavit and emergency ballots.