Former New York Police officer Eric Adams continued to lead former city sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia by a narrow margin after the city tallied thousands of additional absentee ballots Tuesday.
Adams leads Garcia 50.5% to 49.5%, a margin even closer than last Wednesday’s, which showed Adams at 51.1% and Garcia at 48.9%. The city’s Board of Elections a day earlier had mistakenly counted approximately 135,000 invalid ballots, though the original incorrect results mirrored those released Wednesday.
The election is the first in New York City’s history to use ranked-choice voting, which allows voters to rank up to five of their preferred candidates in order instead of selecting just one. As the additional rounds were tallied, Adams went from being ahead of the field by over 9% to the barely one-point lead he has now.
Though Adams continues to lead, an official count is not expected before July 12, nearly three weeks after the election first began.
Adams has centered his campaign around lowering New York City’s crime rate, prompting most of its police organizations to endorse him. He has supported past use of stop-and-frisk, opposes the “defund the police” movement and has said that he will carry if elected, putting him at odds with many of his fellow candidates and making him a target of the progressive left.
Garcia has emphasized policies aimed at rejuvenating small businesses and helping the city combat climate change, earning her endorsements from The New York Times and New York Daily News.
Whoever becomes the Democratic nominee will face Republican Curtis Sliwa in November’s general election and will likely win in a landslide given New York City’s liberal lean.
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