“Serenity now!” ~ Frank Costanza (1997)
This past January, there was a magnitude 2.4 earthquake near Paramus. You probably did not notice. It was super cold and we were in simpler times, four days into Trump’s second term.
I bet New Yorkers felt the shake when the first domino fell in the mayoral election1.2 Mayor Adams will not be running in the Democratic Party primary, running instead as an independent. This is not unprecedented in politics, but was it wise? 2xParked investigates!
Was it a Good Move?
Real talk: if the election were held today, I can confidently say Mayor Adams would not win the primary.
It is difficult to see a path of victory through the Democratic Party primary. Our model had Mayor Adams with a < 1% chance of winning. In the latest RCV polls, he was receiving < 20% of the distributed downstream vote. This holds with the Honan survey results where 8 in 10 Democrats would not support him no matter what. He is a known commodity, not a wild card filled with variance.
Is there a Path to Victory?
Current polling is bad, but this delay affords Mayor Adams an additional 4+ months to rebuild his constituency. The path to victory will not be easy. Let’s make some broad — and fairly aggressive — assumptions to highlight the work required for his campaign.
Below are the last three major city-wide races since Biden’s election in 2020. This gives us a good primer for what a theoretical two-party election would look like. There was thought that the 2024 results might be a red wave (since ‘24 Harris under-performed ‘20 Biden), but 2024 might be more indicative of when New Yorkers do not have enthusiasm for a race, like most off-cycle elections.
What if Gov. Cuomo Wins the Dem Nomination?
Adams will be in trouble.
When included in a recent general election poll against Cuomo, he was down 32 points. In a January Manhattan Institute Poll, Cuomo and Adams faced off at the end of the RCV, with Cuomo winning 70% of the vote. In more recent polls, Cuomo is polling better and Adams is polling worse. I see the 70/30 split as a best case scenario. This is what that would look like if the Democratic vote were split that way:
Adams still needs to make major gains, and there are not many avenues to do that. He would either need to win a majority of the Democratic vote — unlikely with the nomination of one of the more moderate candidates— or win a large chunk of the Republican vote. In the crosstabs — which are extremely low sample size so don’t read too much into them — he was not winning a whole lot of GOP votes either compared to Cuomo.
What if Gov. Cuomo Loses the Dem Nomination?
The door is creaking open.
Since most of the other nominees are progressive, moderates in NYC will have to make a sub-optimal choice: Progressive, Adams, or GOP.
In the polls with RCV, when Adams was eliminated, Cuomo consistently received ~75% of Adams votes. If we assume this to be a reciprocal relationship and Adams retains all of his first place votes, Adams will receive about 37% of the Democratic votes. Here is what that would look like in terms of the general election:
Although slightly better — closing the gap from -28% to -19% — Adams has other levers to play with now. Trump currently has a ~12% disapproval rating among Republican voters. If a MAGA leaning candidate now gets the GOP nod, and all dissatisfied Trump voters go the more moderate former Dem Adams, he closes the gap to -14%.
Like I mentioned, there is a lot of time to improve those numbers. What if Adams won all of his Democratic polled first place votes and Cuomo’s first place votes? What if tariffs cause even more frustration among GOP, and what if that causes them to match the high disapproval from DJT Term 1 of ~15%:
Now it is close (-1%!). We know polls were biased against Trump by about 3 points in 2024. Many believe this might represent his true base who only come out to vote for him. What if Adams has a 3% base of independents who will only vote for him and no one else?
+2%!
Summary, Please
Admittedly, this is a very crude simulation, but I wanted to prove a point.
There are a lot of “what ifs” that have to happen for Adams to be re-elected. I did not even pretend to understand the independent votes and I assumed a lot of best-case scenarios.
A lot can happen in 7 months though. It is too early to count him out yet, especially if the following real possibilities come true:
Progressive candidate wins Democratic Primary AND
Trump and GOP policies become even more unpopular AND
Adams ignites his base to return to the polls AND
The right amount of luck.
We are just getting started.
All non-mayoral content has been pushed back another week.
In the podcast game we call this a bad transition, but I was a bit tired when writing this.