The Boomer boom fueling early voting turnout in NYC mayor’s race

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New York City’s mayoral election is shaping up to be a generational battle at the ballot box, with older voters continuing to drive heavy turnout as younger voters show up in increasing numbers.

A total of 297,718 cast their ballots through the end of day Tuesday, according to Board of Elections data. That surpasses the 169,879 people who voted early during the entire nine-day period four years ago, a sign of an unusually competitive general election and an engaged electorate.

Voters 55 and older currently make up slightly more than 51% of the early voting turnout, with the largest single share of the vote coming from voters 65 to 74 years old, according to a Gothamist analysis.

Voters 25 to 34 make up 16% of the total early voting turnout. But on Tuesday, voters in this bracket made up nearly 18% of the daily turnout, the first time this cycle that younger voters made up a larger percentage than voters 55 to 64, who came in at 17%.

Ever since Zohran Mamdani pulled off a stunning victory in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary, the assemblymember from Queens has held a comfortable lead in most polls. His primary win was buoyed by strong turnout by new and younger voters.

But in the first weekend of early voting, there were signs the script might be flipping back to conventional turnout, which is dominated by older voters.

That shift was welcome news to Andrew Cuomo, who is running as an independent after losing the Democratic primary. Polls show he has an edge among older voters. Mamdani’s campaign blasted an email on Monday sharing Gothamist’s headline on initial turnout, calling on supporters to sign up for more canvas shifts.

Gothamist spoke with voters at two poll sites in the Upper East Side and found a nearly even split in support for Cuomo and Mamdani amongst voters older than 55, but almost uniform support for Mamdani among younger voters.

Outside an early voting site at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cuomo voters cited his fight against antisemitism and experience.

Adam Beckerman, 65, said he opposed Mamdani over his positions on Israel and thought the candidate was, “ignorant about the understanding of free marketplace and rent control issues.”

“I held my nose [and voted] for Andrew Cuomo, but that’s what I did,” he said. Beckerman joked that his wife says he suffers from “Mamdani-derangement syndrome.”

Patricia Palermo, an Upper East Side-based realtor who is over 55, said she voted for Cuomo because of his experience.

“He knows all the players and I think he would be enormously helpful to New York City,” she said adding, “the other fellow, Mamdani, I wish him well. But maybe in a couple of years when he grows a little bit more.”

Outside the poll site at Eleanor Roosevelt High School, retired teacher and artist Giselle Bastos, 67, said she voted for Mamdani because he reminded her of the “simple left” of the 1970s that focused on kitchen-table issues.

Mamdani supporter Lamin Fofana, 43, an artist in Manhattan was sticking an “I voted” sticker on his young son’s puffer jacket as he praised the Democratic nominee’s focus on making the city more livable for New Yorkers. He cited Mamdani’s pitch for free buses and a rent freeze for rent stabilized tenants.

“These are the barest of minimums,” said Fofana. “It’s almost like a faint answer in the call for help.”

Photographer Joana Meurkens, 27, who canvassed for Mamdani on the Upper East Side where she grew up, said this was the most excited she has been for an election in her entire life. She found Upper East Side residents more receptive to Mamdani than she expected. Meurkens’ enthusiasm for the candidate even prompted her mother, who came to the polls with her Tuesday, to re-evaluate her initial support for Cuomo.

“ I feel like this is the first time that I can really get behind a candidate and makes me really proud to be a New Yorker,” Meurkens said.

Of the top five City Council districts with the highest turnout so far, three are in Manhattan on the Upper East and Upper West sides, where Cuomo did his best in the primary. The next two are in brownstone Brooklyn, which has tended to support more progressive candidates like Mamdani.

Analysts for the Cuomo campaign estimated turnout could hit 1.9 to 2.2 million.

“New Yorkers know this is the most important election of our lives and the awesome responsibility of running the city can't be entrusted to someone who requires on the job training,” said Cuomo spokesperson Rich Azzopardi. “Andrew Cuomo will hit the ground running on Day One."

But one expert in voter turnout warned against reading too much into the early numbers, since the option was only used for one other mayoral election in 2021 when the city was still emerging from COVID-19.

“We don’t have a lot of history of early voting in New York,” said Jerry Skurnik, a longtime Democratic political consultant at Engage Voters US. He said it’s hard to accurately predict whether overall voter turnout will really be higher, or if voters who would normally participate are just changing when they vote.

So far, Democratic voters make up 74% of the turnout, compared to nearly 13% Republicans and 11% of unaffiliated voters.

“We have 95,000 volunteers and counting, knocking on doors all across the city and making thousands of phone calls to get out the vote to win a city we can all afford,” Mamdani spokesperson Dore Pekec said. “New Yorkers of all ages are ready to turn the page on the broken politics of small ideas and start a new day for this city.”

Republican Curtis Sliwa’s campaign said the early turnout bodes well for his campaign.

“Early vote numbers look strong across the city and everywhere we go Democrats and Independents tell us they’re crossing party lines for Curtis Sliwa,” said Sliwa spokesperson Daniel Kurzyna. “Curtis is campaigning 20 hours a day and we’re going to shock the world on November 4th by beating back the special interests trying to buy this election.”

P.S.: “All Things Considered” is wrapping up its series of “Word from the Curb,” live broadcasts from neighborhoods around the city. Tune in at 4 p.m. this evening as the team heads to Sunset Park, Brooklyn to revisit the community where we launched the project.

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