Eric Adams, a former policeman, is leading the primary to become the Democratic Party’s candidate for mayor of New York City.
By late yesterday, over 80% of the votes had been counted, with Adams claiming nearly 32%. Andrew Yang, who had run for the Democratic nomination for President last year, was fourth, with 12%.
The Democratic primary works on a ranked-choice voting system, which means voters rank their candidates from most favoured to least favoured. This sees votes distributed among candidates still in play as the least favoured candidates get eliminated. This means that vote counting is quite complex and the final results will only be finalised in the next few weeks.
Maya Wiley, a lawyer and a legal advisor to current mayor Bill de Blasio, came second with just over 20% of the vote.
De Blasio, also a Democrat, cannot serve another term, having served twice.
The Republican Party have already chosen their candidate, Curtis Sliwa. Sliwa is a colourful character, a former radio talk show host who survived an attempt on his life by the Mafia in New York.
The mayoral election is scheduled for November this year.
Although at a national level New York votes overwhelmingly for the Democrats, when it comes to mayoral races the city is far more competitive and people running on Republican tickets, such as Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg, have been elected mayor in recent history (although Bloomberg subsequently became a Democrat, and ran an abortive campaign for the Presidency last year).
[Image: Krystalb97, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=72845653]