Cuomo, Mamdani make their last pitch to voters amid early voting surge and new poll
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Former Governor Andrew Cuomo and Queens Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani made their last pitch to voters ahead of Tuesday’s primary. AP photo/Yuki Iwamura, Eagle photo by Ryan Schwach
By Ryan Schwach
Mayoral candidates Andrew Cuomo and Zohran Mamdani have made their last pitch to voters as New Yorkers head to the polls on Tuesday to vote in a mayor’s race that has boiled down to the two Queens-connected men.
Both candidates blanketed local cable feeds with ads and did their last bit of campaigning before Tuesday’s primary as early voting numbers showed surging turnout and Mamdani surged in a new poll.
Going into Tuesday’s primary, the Democratic nomination is firmly between the two candidates. Mamdani, who represents Queens in the state assembly and Cuomo who was born and spent his early years in the World’s Borough.
A new Emerson College poll released on Monday morning had Mamdani pushing ahead of Cuomo in the eighth and last round of ranked choice voting, taking the election by three and a half percentage points.
That is just under the poll’s 3.6 percent margin of error in the final round.
City Comptroller Brad Lander finished third in the new poll, followed by City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams.
The Emerson poll is the only one not circulated by Mamdani or pro-Mamdani sponsors to have the socialist Queens elected winning the Democratic primary.
“Time and time again we’ve been told that our campaign had a ceiling,” Mamdani told reporters on the campaign trail on Monday. “Now we are seeing, there is no ceiling.”
Cuomo’s campaign called the poll an “outlier.”
“Every other credible pill in this election – including two released last week – has shown Governor Cuomo with a double digit lead, which is exactly where the election will end,” said spokesperson Rich Azzopardi.
On the day before the primary, Cuomo boasted a last minute endorsement from U.S. Congressman George Latimer.
“Together we’ll fight every day for hardworking New Yorkers who deserve safe streets, good jobs, affordable housing and a government that stands up to hate and defends our democracy,” the former governor said in a post on X.
He also campaigned with supporters, including fellow candidate and Queens State Senator Jessica Ramos and Queens Councilmember Selvena Brooks-Powers.
“This election is not just about electing the next mayor of New York City,” he said. “Our Democratic party is against divisive hate filled rhetoric we have heard from some Democrats in this election.”
On Monday, Mamdani campaigned in Flushing with State Senator John Liu, and made a close-to-last pitch to Queens voters from Diversity Plaza in Jackson Heights on Saturday.
“We are three days away from making history, three days away from electing a new generation of leadership in this city,” he said. “This is the moment, this is the time. This is when we come together to make history and show the world that New York City can be more than just the most expensive city in the United States of America.”
Early voting numbers show a surge in voting for this election, with turnout totals nearly double where they were before 2021’s mayoral primary contest which saw Mayor Eric Adams secure the nomination.
In Queens, 75,778 voters – a 114 percent increase from 2021 – joined over 384,000 citywide and voted early.
Queens’ totals were third behind Brooklyn’s 142,735 and Manhattan’s 122,642, but ahead of the Bronx’s 30,816 and Staten Island’s 12,367.
An analysis of the BOE’s data by Gothamist found that the majority of the early voters are young people under the age of 40 and came from Mamdani-friendly neighborhoods like Williamsburg, Greenpoint and Astoria.
Polls are open from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Tuesday, when the temperature is predicted to be upwards of 100 degrees.
