“If you ain't first, you're last” ~ Ricky Bobby (2006)
We are just a few days from polls opening, so I am straight business. No silly AI generated picture based off a prompt like “draw a cat voting with their family at a voting station in New York City.1” No winded analysis about how REAL ID sign ups might impact the election due to an influx of new registered voters.2 No talking of the glory of the Mets or the shame of the Knicks.3
Nope. Pure 100% no-nonsense business. Here is where the MayorModel stands today in terms of 1st place votes:
Here are the probabilities of winning as told by the MayorModel:
Essentially, if you roll a six-sided dice and you get 1-2-3-4 it will be Andrew Cuomo and if you roll 5-6 it will be Zohran Mamdani.
There has been chatter of Mamdani momentum, especially as the the prediction markets have him up to 27% when 3 weeks ago he was at 6%. I mostly believe this is a market correction as opposed to momentum.
When I last wrote a few weeks ago, the MayorModel had Cuomo at 77% and Mamdani at 20% even though prediction markets had it 90/6 — which I said was silly at the time. 77% and 72% are not substantially different from one another. Additionally, it is now clear that Mamdani, not Brad Lander, is the progressive candidate of choice for this election. As late as April, both Lander and Mamdani were assigned near similar odds according Polymarket.
Brad Lander is an interesting candidate to hypothesize about. Since February, it has been (1) Cuomo, (2) Mamdani, and (3) Lander in the polls. In other universes, that might not be the situation.
What if the New York Times endorsed a candidate?
The Times might have endorsed Andrew Cuomo, especially since most voters believe he is the best candidate to stand up to Donald Trump. The Times endorsed Cuomo over Cynthia Nixon in 2018 for this very reason. He also did not receive the endorsement from the Times in 2014 when he ran against Zephyr Teachout though.
The Times might have also endorsed Zohran Mamdani, a member of the DSA who is considered the most progressive candidate. We have seen in the past, with endorsements of Jumaane Williams for Lieutenant Governor in 2018, that the paper is not afraid to veer left with its picks. The Times has not ventured this far left in an executive #1 role recently though.
The obvious endorsement would have been Brad Lander. Lander is both very left, earning the Working Family Party #2 endorsement, and very established, serving in City government as an elected politician since 2009.
Lander received the NY Times endorsement for Comptroller in 2021, and it is hard to believe it was not a driver for his victory. Around the time of the endorsement, Lander was polling at 13% in 1st place votes, down considerably to Corey Johnson (21%). A week after the endorsement, Lander shot up to a strong first with 26%.
We also saw 2021 mayoral candidate Kathryn Garcia went from a pool of third place candidates at 6-10% to solid second place of 15+% after her Times endorsement. If Lander had received a similar bump, he might have been neck-and-neck with Mamdani for second with a potential path to victory.
What if Brad Lander had dropped out early?
The same could be asked of Adrienne Adams and Zellnor Myrie.
For the second consecutive mayoral election, there have been multiple progressive candidates running for the same spot. The messaging with RCV has been that you should “vote for us” as opposed to “vote for me.”
In marketing terms, this makes it more confusing to customers. Messaging is no longer simple and unified. The complexity causes friction in analyzing and choosing the best candidate. Too many choices can also confuse a customer and cause, as some researchers call it, “brain freeze.”
Additionally, the two major resources — time and money — are split. Instead of newspapers/X/NY1 covering one of the candidates, they are forced to split coverage. Instead of one source of funding which can be converted into unified advertisements and a stronger ground game, it is shared across all the candidates. Instead of being down 55-45 in polling, which is a better known baseline by more popular presidential election standards, we are seeing difficult-to-interpret quantities like 25% and 11%.
You could argue that Lander’s presence brought in incremental voters which could steer towards Mamdani, but most downstream Lander polling has only slightly favored Mamdani.
This is not to say Mamdani and progressives would be a mayoral champion in this primary had Lander dropped out, but their chances would have been much stronger.
Now What
As polls change and tallies are revealed, 2xParked will keep you posted on what you need to know. In the meantime, find a good time to vote between June 14 and June 24, locate your polling site, and support your local newsletters.
I estimate it might be fairly minimal, bringing in an incremental 5k-20k votes.
LGM