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democratic primary
Grassroots Dems Pushing DNC to Adopt Ranked-Choice Voting After Mamdani's Win
One pollster argued that ranked-choice "gives a better chance to new faces, outsider candidates, people with grassroots movements, people who run positive campaigns, people who have something new to offer."
Nov 24, 2025
Progressives are hopeful that a new push for ranked-choice voting could allow for more primary races in which candidates who accurately reflect the priorities of the party’s voters rise to the top.
Ranked-choice voting (RCV), which lets voters rank candidates in order of preference rather than voting for a single one, was instrumental in the unexpected triumph of New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani in this summer’s Democratic primary.
Axios reported Monday that Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair Ken Martin has recently met with advocates seeking to implement RCV in the party's 2028 presidential primary.
Among them were reportedly Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), pollster Celinda Lake, organizers with the nonprofit FairVote Action, and several other figures in the Democratic Party.
Raskin is a long-time advocate for ranked-choice voting. In 2019, leading up to what would be a chaotic and crowded 2020 primary, he wrote in Common Dreams, along with political organizers Adam Eichen and Rob Richie, that:
RCV is the best way to allow greater voter choice without wasted votes and unrepresentative winners...
It will help any party gain stronger nominees and provide more clarity about what voters really want going into conventions. Because voters’ backup choices matter, candidates with RCV tend to run more positive campaigns, seek common ground, and respect their opponents’ supporters.
Notably, that scenario is exactly what played out in New York City’s Democratic primary. City Comptroller Brad Lander, another progressive mayoral candidate, was able to encourage his voters to rank the more popular Mamdani without fear of splitting the votes and helping their centrist opponents.
At a time when Democratic voters have historically low levels of trust in their party's leaders, Lake told Axios that "[RCV] gives a better chance to new faces, outsider candidates, people with grassroots movements, people who run positive campaigns, people who have something new to offer. It really meets the moment."
New York City is the highest-profile practitioner of RCV, which it adopted in 2019 for party primaries. But others include Maine and Alaska, as well as cities like San Francisco and Minneapolis.
Republicans have aggressively sought to outlaw ranked-choice voting in states where they have legislative control. In 2024, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Kentucky all passed bills to outlaw RCV—bans that may hinder its implementation as a new nationwide system, even in Democratic primaries.
Meanwhile, in Colorado, Nevada, Idaho, and Oregon, voters rejected RCV during last year's elections following industry-backed pushes against it.
In a letter to the editor of the Anchorage Daily News on Sunday, a reader pointed out that President Donald Trump's calls for any Indiana lawmakers who vote against redistricting the state in the GOP's favor to be "PRIMARIED" was evidence of why RCV "is important for protecting our democratic process."
“In ranked-choice voting, no one person, nor small group of people, can keep a candidate in their party off the final ballot because they don’t agree with a particular partisan attitude,” he wrote.
In order for the DNC to implement ranked-choice voting, it would need support from its Rules and Bylaws Committee, whose members are appointed by Martin. It would also need majority support from the DNC's roughly 450 members, which include state party leaders and others elected by states. Axios reported that enthusiasm among members is mixed.
Progressive commentators have expressed excitement at the idea: "This would be a fantastic pro-democracy stance," wrote the left-wing Breaking Points co-host Krystal Ball on social media.
But others doubted that party powerbrokers, who worked behind the scenes to stop the insurgent campaigns of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in 2016 and 2020, would ever implement a reform that would cede so much power to outsider candidates.
“This is a great idea,” said Sanders’ 2020 press secretary, Briahna Joy Gray. “They won’t do it.”
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A Day Before the Election, Poll Shows Mamdani Besting Cuomo in NYC Democratic Mayoral Primary
"On the day before the election, we stand on the verge of toppling a political dynasty and winning a city we can afford," wrote Mamdani.
Jun 23, 2025
New poll results released Monday show State Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani narrowly ahead of former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the city's Democratic mayoral primary, which takes place on Tuesday and will be conducted via ranked-choice voting.
Early voting in the race began on June 14 and has far exceeded early voting turnout from the previous Democratic mayoral primary in 2021, though that contest was impacted by Covid-19.
The final Emerson College Polling/PIX11/The Hill survey of the primary race shows that Cuomo leads Mamdani 35% to 32% (within the plus or minus 3.4% margin of error) when voters are asked about their top pick overall. However, when the two face off in a ranked-choice voting simulation, Mamdani—a democratic socialist—wins with an outright majority in the eighth round with 52% to Cuomo's 48%, according to the poll. The margin of error for the final round is plus or minus 3.6%.
"On the day before the election, we stand on the verge of toppling a political dynasty and winning a city we can afford. But we can only do it with you," Mamdani wrote on Monday, referencing the poll.
The only other candidate who notched above 10% is New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who secured 12.8% when voters were asked to name their top pick in the race. Lander was recently arrested by federal agents at an immigration court in lower Manhattan while escorting an individual out of immigration court.
In New York City's ranked-choice voting system, which is used for certain elections including primary and special elections for mayor, voters rank multiple candidates on their ballots. If no candidate receives more than 50% of first choice votes, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and the votes that went to that candidate are reallocated to the voters' second choice. That distribution of votes repeats in subsequent rounds until one candidate wins an outright majority or there are only two candidates remaining.
"Over five months, Mamdani's support has surged from 1% to 32%, while Cuomo finishes near where he began," said Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, in a statement published Monday. "In the ranked-choice simulation, Mamdani gains 18 points compared to Cuomo's 12, putting him ahead in the final round for the first time in an Emerson poll."
Cuomo has been the consistent frontrunner in the contest, though some recent polling shows Mamdani eating into his lead or pulling ahead.
"This is an outlier: Every other credible poll in this election—including two released last week—has shown Governor Cuomo with a double digit lead, which is exactly where this election will end tomorrow. Between now and then we will continue to fight for every vote like he will fight for every New Yorker as mayor," a Cuomo spokesperson in a statement sent to multiple outlets.
In a Marist poll published last week, Cuomo broke above the 50% threshold in the seventh round of ranked-choice voting.
Mamdani has become a viable contender in the race in part because of an impressive ground game and his high number of individual small dollar donations.
"The campaign has tapped into people’s belief that things could genuinely be better. The context of [President Donald] Trump is a part of that, where people are feeling in a very dark place politically and feeling the necessity of getting involved," said one Mamdani canvasser who spoke to The American Prospect. Mamdani is “running on hope, possibility, and joy. We really could have a better society and a better city, and I think that has spoken deeply to people.”
Volunteers with his campaign have knocked on over a million doors around the city, according to his campaign website, and nearly 16,000 individual donors have contributed a donation of less than $100, according to The Financial Times. Cuomo has amassed a little over 1,000 donations from individual donors who gave less than $100, per the outlet.
Cuomo has benefited from backers supporting him through super political action committees, which are not limited in how much they raise though they are barred from donating directly to a political candidate. According to the FT, pro-Cuomo super PACS have poured an unprecedented $27 million into the race.
When it comes to high profile political endorsements, Cuomo has the backing of several establishment Democratic figures, including former President Bill Clinton and U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.). Meanwhile, Mamdani has earned the endorsement of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
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'Wow. Just Wow': New Poll Has Mamdani Ahead of Cuomo in NYC Mayoral Primary
"Everyone who is serious about defeating Andrew Cuomo needs to endorse Zohran Mamdani immediately," wrote one Democratic state senator.
Jun 12, 2025
A June survey from Public Policy Polling shows New York City mayoral candidate and democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani ahead of opponent and former Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo as the city's Democratic primary draws near. Primary day is June 24 and early voting begins June 14.
Cuomo has been the consistent front-runner in the race, though Mamdani, a state assemblymember who is running on an affordability platform, has risen from long-shot candidate to serious contender.
"All gas, no breaks," wrote Mamdani on X on Wednesday of the poll results.
"When you run a disciplined, grassroots campaign relentlessly focused on an agenda to address the crises in working people's lives, these are the results," Andrew Epstein, spokesperson for Mamdani, told Politico, which was first to report on the results of the poll on Wednesday.
Mehdi Hasan, editor-in-chief and CEO of the outlet Zeteo, wrote on X: "Wow. Just wow."
New York Democratic state Sen. Jabari Brisport reacted to reporting on the poll by writing that "everyone who is serious about defeating Andrew Cuomo needs to endorse Zohran Mamdani immediately."
The poll was conducted for the campaign of candidate for city comptroller Justin Brannan, a Democrat, and surveyed 573 likely Democratic primary voters between June 6-7. On June 9, Mamdani posted a video asking New Yorkers to donate to Brannan's campaign.
The relevant question in the poll lists eight Democratic candidates running in the race and asks respondents who they would vote for among them.
Thirty-five percent of respondents said Mamdani, while 31% said they would support Cuomo. The other candidate options listed did not break above 10%, and 11% of respondents said they were not sure.
The poll, however, does not include how the candidates would fare in a ranked-choice voting simulation. New York City uses ranked-choice voting for certain elections, including primary and special elections for mayor. The system allows voters to rank multiple candidates on their ballots.
"As you know, we have had a poll in the field at the same time and our poll showed a race with us maintaining what has now been a consistent double digit lead for more than three months—which is rare for any NYC mayoral race in recent memory," Cuomo spokesperson Rich Azzopardi told Politico. The poll Azzopardi was speaking of is from Expedition Strategies and showed Cuomo leading Mamdani by 12 points after eight rounds of voting.
In response to reporting on the latest survey that shows Mamdani ahead, some observers cast doubt on the quality of Public Policy Polling's polls.
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