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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, again, everyone, and happy primary day, again, everyone. Back to primary day coverage now for just a few minutes though. A little more with Brigid Bergin and a little more of our informal, unofficial, thoroughly unscientific primary day exit poll. We're going to ask a very specific question this time based on this text from a listener regarding the get out the vote. It says just regarding get out the vote. I'll just read it the way it was written. "There are folks walking into polls who are still undecided. There are also people we spoke to on the street who knew the election was today but hadn't thought about a voting plan. The number one thing I emphasize," writes this listener, "is A, polling location, and B--" well, this listener's preference, which I'm not even going to say because the point is not that. The point is that there are people who are really last minute deciders. I'm curious, if anybody's listening now, who only decided on your rankings in the last three days, that's who we're going to invite phone calls from right now.

This is only going to go 5 or 10 minutes. So call right in and you're going to get right on. If you have only decided on your rankings, and maybe you knew your number one but didn't know who you were going to rank below, that counts. If you've decided on your rankings only in the last three days, maybe we'll get an informal, unofficial, thoroughly unscientific sense of how people are falling at the last minute in a close race. 212-433-WNYC. If that sounds like you, if you only decided on your rankings in the Democratic primary for mayor in particular, in the last three days. 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692, call or text. Back with us is WNYC's senior political reporter Brigid Bergin. Hello again, Brigid.

Brigid Bergin: Hey, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: First, any breaking primary news since we spoke last hour. Anything to report about polling sites in the heat or last minute candidate wars or election day lawsuits or charges of election fraud, real or fake, or anything else?

Brigid Bergin: No, I think fortunately, I don't have anything like that to report as of yet. We do continue to hear from people about issues at poll sites. We are seeing more of our mayoral candidates going out and casting their ballots. I know that Andrew Cuomo was scheduled to vote around 10:30. I've seen that State Senator Zellnor Myrie has cast his ballot today. So, I think were there problems at those sites, we certainly would have heard of them, and we haven't yet. So I think that that is a good thing.

Brian Lehrer: Let's fill in our listeners on the news you reported about the early voting numbers. They don't release the results, but they do release some meaningful data about turnout and who voted where and when. Early voting in person was from last Saturday through Sunday, two days ago. What did they make public after those nine days?

Brigid Bergin: Well, this is actually data that I requested. It's some analysis that we have done exclusively at WNYC, but I will note that we had some incredible support from the Center for Urban Research, Steve Romalewski and John Mollenkopf, because we asked some questions of the data that went beyond what we could do on our own. Top lines, the information that we have shows about 385,000 people had voted early. That number is inclusive of some preliminary absentee ballots and other people who voted by mail. That's why it's a little bit higher than the number that we said before, the 384,000 check-ins during early voting.

We know from looking at where those voters turned out that some of the highest turnout assembly districts, the one that has been the highest turnout since the first day we reported, on day four, all the way through day nine has been Assembly District 52, that's Downtown Brooklyn, Brooklyn Heights. Assembly Member Jo Anne Simon's district. Very active local Democratic club there. They've been working on getting their vote out, as I mentioned yesterday, since back in February. They have about 18,447 people who went out and checked in and cast those early voting ballots. So, really strong turnout in that really brownstone Brooklyn area.

The thing that is probably most interesting to me, and this was something that we were able to discover thanks to some analysis of longer term voter history turnout that the Center for Urban Research has, the number of people who have never voted in a Democratic primary before, in this particular election, it's about 25% of the early voters.

Brian Lehrer: Wow.

Brigid Bergin: Those-- it's huge.

Brian Lehrer: That's really, really high. That's really good for Mamdani, I presume.

Brigid Bergin: Just to give that a sense of context, Brian, if you compare that to 2021, the number of people who were first time participants in Democratic primary was 3% in the early voting stats.

Brian Lehrer: So, first time voters in the primary in 2021 was just 3% of the early voters.

Brigid Bergin: First time voter. Yes.

Brian Lehrer: Just 3%. This time, 25%. Did I hear you right?

Brigid Bergin: Yes, first time, you heard it. First time Democratic primary voters. They might have voted in another election before. They might not necessarily be first time, first time voters, but the first time that they participated in a Democratic primary, that number is 25% of the 2025 early voting turnout. In 2021, it was 3% of the early voting turnout. So, it's a huge increase in-

Brian Lehrer: What do you make of who that appears to benefit, if you can make anything of it?

Brigid Bergin: One of the things that has been a clear strategy of the Mamdani campaign is to activate voters who are new voters, or voters who have been registered but maybe not reached out to, because they're not triple prime voters. I was working on a story going out into Southeast Queens, talking to voters there. I spent some time in front of Greater Allen A.M.E church talking to voters coming out, heard probably more Cuomo support than anything else there. Then I went out with a group of canvassers for Mamdani's campaign that were out in Jamaica.

We went door to door in this apartment building, and we hit the door of a voter who was a registered voter, he had become a citizen in 2014, he had voted once before. One time before, but no one had reached out to him during this mayoral campaign about this particular race. These canvassers, really, they worked very hard. They gave him the literature, they gave them their pitch, and I think it's likely that they converted a voter.

To see that, to be reporting on that, to watch that with my own eyes, and to imagine that multiplied by the number of canvassers they have out there, it was a real window into the strategy of this campaign. So, I think that it is likely that these new voters will benefit the Mamdani campaign. Now, huge caveat. Do we know if some of these people are people who would have voted for him on primary day anyhow? We don't know that yet. What will it mean for the overall shift in the electorate?

Again, we won't know that until the end of today, but I think it is a very telling sign that if your strategy was to bring new voters into the fold, potentially new voters who were not getting captured by some of the polling that we have seen throughout this race, where they're reaching out to those likely Democratic voters, it may start to help us understand if it turns out that Mamdani is successful, why the polls were showing for so long that he was trailing and then ultimately that he succeeds in the end.

Again, these are things we won't know until we have the full set of results in, but it was by far the most interesting thing I saw in the data that we were able to analyze over the past couple of days.

Brian Lehrer: Let's hear from a couple of listeners. We only have a few minutes in this segment for calls or texts, but late deciders. Deciders so late that you decided in the last three days. Scott, in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hello, Scott.

Scott: Hey, y'all. All right. So I'll just run down my list real quick. I did a late decision for Cuomo last night and when I saw that he was running with Mamdani, excuse me, neck to neck, because I'm kind of ADM. Maybe that shows me as a establishment Democrat, but I just think he's anti-business. I read this really good interview with Kathy Wylde in City & State, and about-

Brian Lehrer: Kathy Wylde, who's a business leader in the city. Go ahead. Just passing that along for the listeners.

Scott: Yes, yes, yes. Exactly. Yes. She says basically, the business community is terrified of him. I mean, I'm a businessman, and I don't feel like he's really reached out to the business community. I think that maybe now is not the time for him. It's not that I hate him, it's just that for this particular election, not the right thing. I had Bradley [crosstalk]-

Brian Lehrer: What's the-- very briefly, Scott, when you say you're a business person and the business community is terrified of Mamdani, what are they terrified that he's going to do?

Scott: Well, I think that he's not, like I said, he's not bridging the gap, and I think that raising taxes and spending tons of money, I think that there's going to be a flee of business away from the city.

Brian Lehrer: Scott, I'm going to leave it there just for time, but I think you've got the complete thought out there. I appreciate it. That's one late decider. Meg, in Brooklyn, is another. Meg, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Meg: Hi. Yes, so I just decided over the weekend. The way I decided was to use the book that they send out, and then I also looked people up online and I ended up on The New York Times interviews, and I kind of used that to inform my decisions for mayor. Then the other, the public advocate, comptroller-- I've only lived here for three years, so I have never voted for those positions before ever. I just used the book for that, because I wasn't really even sure what those people did.

Brian Lehrer: For mayor, you told our screener Adams' number one, Mamdani number two.

Meg: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: How come last minute decision in that direction after the research that you just described, and why not Cuomo?

Meg: Well, because I'm a survivor of sexual assault, and I'm not going to vote for anybody who I think might be-- who's had charges brought up against them in that way. I guess I put Adams first, Adrienne Adams first, because I feel like I'm voting for from a feminist point of view. So I'm going to-- and I thought that there didn't seem to be a lot of difference between what she had to say and Mamdani had to say. So that was my point of view.

Brian Lehrer: Meg, thank you very much. All right. So, we had one late decider against Mamdani, one late decider against Cuomo. So much of it is that, Brigid, right? Besides a lot of people voting for somebody, people voting to stop Cuomo or stop Mamdani, we're hearing that so much. Let's just close with this thought from a listener in a text. Listener writes, "This is a huge task, to pick a top choice for mayor and then four other choices. Harder than any other election." Writes this listener. "Then we're also choosing comptroller, public advocate, borough president. This is a lot to decide on. Hard."

Brian Lehrer: Last thought?

Brigid Bergin: Yes, I mean, I think, again, part of what will come out in the analysis after this primary is people will weigh in on ranked choice voting, but I think as we head towards that general election in November, where there will not be ranked choice voting, and there will likely be four to five candidates on the general election ballot, one of whom could win with some small fraction of the vote, I think people will be weighing, "Well, wait a minute. Why did we have ranked choice voting in the primary and now we don't have ranked choice voting in the general?"

I think there will be a lot of conversations about how we vote in elections, in primary and general elections here in New York City, after we get through all of this. I will say I sympathize with that texture. There are a lot of choices to make. You do the best you can. You deploy the strategy that you think will support your values, and hopefully, you get out there and vote. That's the best thing that we can ask.

Brian Lehrer: WNYC's senior political reporter Brigid Bergin. Brigid, I'll talk to you at seven o'clock tonight on our primary night coverage.

Brigid Bergin: Enjoy the heat, Brian.

[laughter]

Brian Lehrer: If nobody else does.

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