Far More New Yorkers Voted Early This Year, With Strong Showing by Younger Voters
This year, 384,388 voters showed up to early-voting sites during the week and a half preceding Primary Day, according to the Board of Elections's preliminary numbers. Early voting ended Sunday evening.
In 2021, 190,744 people voted early in the primary, a lackluster turnout that was most likely depressed by concerns about voting in person during a pandemic.
At a minimum, the increase this year suggests New Yorkers have grown more accustomed to early voting, which began in New York City in 2019. The 2021 primary, in which Eric Adams won the Democratic nomination for mayor, was the first major city election in which it was put to the test.
'First of all, in 2021, we were still mainly in an absentee-ballot environment, because it was still Covid,' said Sarah Steiner, an election lawyer in New York City.
And, Ms. Steiner added, 'all of the candidates for everything have been saying 'Early vote, early vote, early vote,' and so there's been a lot more publicity about the early voting.'
Absentee ballots must be returned or postmarked by Tuesday in order to be counted in this election. In 2021, city voters returned 125,000 absentee ballots to the Board of Elections. As of Monday, 55,194 absentee ballots had been returned, according to Vincent Ignizio, a Board of Elections spokesman.
Andrew M. Cuomo, the former governor now running for mayor, argued on Sunday that 'the higher the turnout the better.' He said that voters were showing up in higher numbers because they were 'scared' of the election's possible outcome.
But Andrew Epstein, a spokesman for Zohran Mamdani, the assemblyman running to Mr. Cuomo's left, expressed hope that the surge in early voting, particularly among younger voters, could indicate an expansion in the electorate.
Almost a quarter of all early voters this year had not voted in a Democratic primary since before 2012, if ever, according to a CUNY Center for Urban Research analysis first reported by Gothamist.
'We always knew that turning the page on the corrupt politics of the past and taking on the biggest crises in the lives of working-class New Yorkers would require a surge in turnout, especially from people who had not been part of the political process before,' Mr. Epstein said.
The early voting data, he said, was 'an encouraging sign that that movement is coming together.'
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