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Brigid Bergin: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin, senior reporter in the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom, filling in for Brian today. Today at noon, the New York City Board of Elections will post the results of the first ranked-choice tabulation in the prime primary. Now, we've all assumed the outcome of this election. Former Governor Andrew Cuomo has already conceded to Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, but there's still a mathematically possible yet very unlikely chance that Cuomo could win.

That's according to Steven Romalewski, the director of the CUNY Mapping Service at the Center for Urban Research. He and his team have created some tools I use routinely in my own reporting, including a great website called Redistricting and You, where you can get all kinds of about the changes to your city council, state legislative, and congressional district lines. He's also behind the New York City Election Atlas, which has great data on past elections and maps of turnout up and down, all the way down to the election district level. He's been analyzing the results of the first round of ranked-choice voting. He joins us now with his findings. Steven, welcome to WNYC.

Steven Romalewski: Thanks so much. Really glad to be here.

Brigid Bergin: Listeners, we have time for a few calls. Do you have questions about the first round of ranked-choice voting in this Democratic mayoral primary, or what could we learn from these remaining results that'll be released in just a few minutes? Are you wondering what these results will mean for the road ahead to November's general election, which is not using ranked choice voting? You can call us or text us at 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692.

Steven, what are you expecting to see at noon today? Will we have the results immediately? Are they going to trickle in because the Board of Elections is just beginning to calculate the ranked-choice tallies? How long is this going to take?

Steven Romalewski: Well, I should preface this by saying I don't know exactly what the Board of Elections will do. They could do whatever they want. Based on what they did in 2021 and based on the typical process with ranked choice voting, they say they'll publish the updated rounds of voting today citywide. I don't expect they'll provide the detailed election district-level updates. I think it'll just be citywide. Again, they could prove me wrong.

Brigid Bergin: [laughs]

Steven Romalewski: We'll know, based on not just the early votes, plus the day of votes on the primary day, and also plus some absentee ballots that the Board of Elections has since processed what the updated totals are. Importantly, how all of the lower ranked or lower vote-getting candidates, how all of their ballots got reallocated to likely get one of the candidates, Assemblyman Mamdani or Governor Andrew Cuomo, to 50 plus 1%.

Brigid Bergin: Now, during the polling process, we saw the election being decided is as many as eight rounds during ranked choice voting in 2021. You and I were talking about this yesterday because we really love these numbers. Do you have a sense of how many rounds we'll expect to say? Again, for clarity to our listeners, we're not expecting the number of rounds to change the amount of time it takes. This is being done by a computer. The number of rounds may change the amount of information we know about where those votes are reallocated. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Steven Romalewski: Sure. I think it is important to just talk about that word, rounds, for a moment, because you think of a boxing round, where they get into the ring, the bell goes off, they punch for 10, 15 minutes, they stop and then there's a break and then there's another round. It's not like that with ranked-choice voting. A round is just the determination of the lowest vote-getting candidate to eliminate that candidate and then allocate that candidate's ballots based on any of the remaining candidates that were ranked on those ballots. Like you said, it's done by computer. It's instantaneous. It doesn't take any time at all.

The other thing to keep in mind is that because, in this election, pretty much everyone, including Brad Lander, got so few votes, compared with Cuomo and Mamdani, that I assume that the Board of Elections will eliminate them all at once in a batch. That's an option that the Board of Elections used in 2021. Technically, there can be a round for each candidate because each candidate gets eliminated one by one.

If the elimination and allocating all of that candidate's ballots doesn't change the end result, you can eliminate all of them at once, as long as the total vote of all of those combined votes doesn't exceed the next candidate above them. That means that we may not know how Brad Lander's ballots, for example, got allocated.

Brigid Bergin: If they use that batch elimination.

Steven Romalewski: Right. They could eliminate him along with all the others in one shot. That also means that there'll just be one round, really, a round of transfers. There'll be the initial vote and then the second round and they will decide the winner.

Brigid Bergin: I find the process fascinating. One of our listeners texted, "Why is the November election not using ranked choice voting? Is there any movement to change the general to ranked-choice as well?"

Steven Romalewski: Well, that's a good question. There's a lot of ongoing discussion about, what does ranked-choice voting mean? Is it good? Is it bad? When it was adopted in New York City, it was adopted by ballot proposal and it was determined that it would be for primary elections, not for general elections, probably because there's usually more candidates in a primary election, and usually because we have a two-party system and the general election is usually two candidates. You don't need it for two candidates. Although at this time, we might have a very different situation for the general election, so we'll see.

Brigid Bergin: That's right. We know at this point that we will see incumbent Mayor Eric Adams on the ballot on an independent ballot line, Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa on the Republican line, whoever is determined to be the official winner of the Democratic mayoral primary on that line. At this point, it looks like assembly members are Mamdani and potentially Andrew Cuomo, who also has an independent ballot line, though it's unclear to us if he's planning to campaign fully, but we know that he has maintained that ballot line.

Steven, I teased the thread that you put up in Bluesky, but I think we need to unpack that a little bit. You looked at those first-round results and you begin with a hypothetical shakeup that would not just, I think, blow the minds of people in the city, but might become national news if it were true. You say that it's extremely unlikely, but still mathematically possible that Andrew Cuomo could win in this second round of voting. How does that math math?

Steven Romalewski: Assuming for a moment that we don't include the absentee ballots, and that all of the ballots from Lander on down are used, in other words, they're not exhausted. In other words, all of those ballots, someone ranked either Mamdani or Cuomo. Mamdani needs a third of those ballots to get to 50 plus 1% of the first-round total. The exact numbers will be a little different because absentee ballots will be included, and I'm sure some ballots will be exhausted. The overall contour of that is that he doesn't need much in order to get to that 50 plus 1%.

If, for some reason, people ranked Cuomo more than him, if he gets less than one-third of those ballots, he would lose. Cuomo would get 50 plus 1%. Mathematically, it's still possible. I think it is very unlikely because there was such a strong don't rank Cuomo pitch from many of the candidates, and there was the partnership or the coalition, I guess you'd call it, with Lander and Mamdani. I would imagine that that's not going to be the case. I think probably what we'll see is Mamdani's margin over Cuomo will grow perhaps substantially. That'll be very interesting to see how it grows. Again, who knows?

Brigid Bergin: We will see. We don't know yet. No one knows the answer. Part of what I think intrigues us both about this is voters can surprise us, and it's going to be exciting to see these results. I know you have spent--

Steven Romalewski: If I may, that's why I always say that you can't really go by the polls before the election. Like they say in sports, you have to play the game to find out who's going to win. As we saw in the primary, this time around, there could be upsets.

[laughter]

Brigid Bergin: A listener who texted, "They should make the ranked-choice reveals like a game show with blinking lights and each relocation round teased into commercial breaks before the big reveal. Maybe even Ryan Seacrest." I think it's fun, too. I'm into it. I'm right there with you, listener. Steve, you've looked at where Andrew Cuomo and Zohran Mamdani did well in the city. Can you talk for a moment about that, and so what that might suggest about where you might be looking for either candidate to pick up some second-choice votes?

Steven Romalewski: Well, it's a little hard to say, in part, because, except for Brad Lander, the other candidates got so few votes. There's really not a lot to pick up. There's really no concentrations of votes from those other places, unlike in 2021, where there were a lot of concentrations from people like Andrew Yang and Maya Wiley and all. It'll be interesting to see how Brad Lander's ballots get allocated, because he did have some concentrations, although I think most of his concentrations were already in areas like Park Slope and Cass Village in upper Manhattan, where Mamdani also did well. I think it'll help Mandani, but I don't think it'll change the contours, the spatial patterns of where the votes played out between Mamdani and Cuomo.

Brigid Bergin: There's the chance, as you mentioned, that we may not even see where the transfer is from those Lander ballots if they do a batch elimination for that segment of candidates whose total number of votes is still less than what Cuomo received in his first choice round.

Steven Romalewski: Eventually, the Board of Elections, once they certify the result, after they've processed all of the absentee ballots, et cetera, et cetera, they will publish what they call the cast vote record, which will be an anonymous ballot by ballot indication of the rankings. That will be by individual ballot and also by election district, which there's about 5,000 of them throughout the city.

Then we'll be able to know candidate by candidate, not only how their ballots were transferred to the other higher vote-getting candidates, but where they were transferred. We will then map that information. Our team at the Graduate Center, led by John Mollenkopf, who's been analyzing these numbers in great detail, will map all of that down to the election district so people will be able to see more than they ever wanted to see about the vote patterns.

Brigid Bergin: Just briefly, let's talk for a second about turnout. We saw more than a million voters in this primary. There was a small Republican primary also. Any short comment on how you think ranked-choice voting is affecting turnout in these primaries?

Steven Romalewski: Well, I think in 2021, there was big turnout in the primary. The first time ranked-choice voting was used, big turnout again. I think part of that is certainly due to the energy that the Mamdani campaign brought to the election. Also, ranked-choice voting invites a lot of candidates and it gives people a lot of choices. There's a lot more participation in a way, both from the voters and the candidates. That inspires, I hope, more turnout.

Brigid Bergin: Well, we are going to leave it there for today. My guest has been Steven Romalewski, Director of the CUNY Mapping Service in the Center for Urban Research at the CUNY Graduate Center. Steve, we have like a minute and a half before they're going to post those results. I want to run to a computer right now. Thank you so much for joining me.

Steven Romalewski: Thank you.

Brigid Bergin: I'm Brigid Bergin, and this is The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Thanks for listening, everybody, and stay tuned for All Of It.

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