New York City hit the polls in record-breaking fashion on Tuesday, with turnout reaching more than 2 million voters before polls closed at 9 p.m., a level of turnout not seen in a mayoral election since 1969.
The high-volume turnout on Election Day comes after a record-breaking 735,000 voters cast ballots during early voting.
Many New York City voters sat out the 2021 mayoral race, when then-Democratic nominee Eric Adams faced Republican Curtis Sliwa. Roughly 1.15 million New Yorkers, or just 23% of active registered voters, participated in the election, according to data from the New York City Board of Elections.
After narrowly winning the Democratic primary, Adams cruised to a decisive victory in the general election, clobbering Sliwa by nearly 40 points.
The highest turnout this century was in 2001, with 1.52 million votes cast — when billionaire businessman Michael Bloomberg, running on the Republican and Independence party lines, defeated Democratic nominee Mark Green, who was the city’s public advocate at the time. The race took place nearly two months after the 9/11 terror attacks on the World Trade Center.
A recent high-water mark for voter turnout came in 1989, when Democratic candidate David Dinkins defeated Republican Rudy Giuliani. Nearly 1.9 million New Yorkers turned out for that election. Four years later, a similar number of voters turned out, that time to help Giuliani defeat Dinkins. The turnout was nearly as high.
With hours left before polls close, it is possible that the election will draw more than 2 million voters. That would be a throwback to city elections of the 1960s. In 1969, John Lindsay won re-election running on just the Liberal Party line, with more than 2.46 million New Yorkers casting a vote.
Four years earlier, Lindsay was elected in 1965 on the Republican and Liberal Party lines with 2.65 million.
This story has been updated with new information.
