A high-profile City Council race on Manhattan\u2019s West Side cannot be called until next week because no candidate secured more than 50 percent of the vote, the New York City Board of Elections said on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n
The winner will not be determined until a tally of ranked-choice voting preferences is conducted, which the Board of Elections said cannot be completed until May 5.<\/p>\n
The race, a special election, has pitted Carl Wilson, a community activist endorsed by a number of prominent Manhattan Democrats, against Lindsey Boylan, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America who was backed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani.<\/p>\n
In a ranked-choice system, voters are able to select a number of candidates in order of preference. The Board of Elections posted preliminary results online Tuesday that showed whom voters ranked as their first choice.<\/p>\n
According to those figures, with 99 percent of votes counted, Mr. Wilson appeared to hold a significant lead over Ms. Boylan, of roughly 43 percent to 26 percent. They were trailed by two other candidates, Layla Law-Gisiko, with roughly 20 percent, and Leslie Boghosian Murphy with roughly 11 percent.<\/p>\n
Because no candidate exceeded 50 percent of the votes in the first round, the candidate in last place, which appears to be Ms. Boghosian Murphy, will be eliminated, and the votes will be reallocated to whichever candidate those voters ranked second. That process will continue until one of the candidates exceeds 50 percent of the votes.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs we had no candidate get over 50 percent tonight, and we are over 99 percent of the vote in the tally, we will run ranked-choice voting next Tuesday,\u201d said Vincent Ignizio, the deputy executive director of the Board of Elections.<\/p>\n
He said the full ranked-choice tally would not be available until next week because the Board of Elections must collect the voting machines, bring them back to a facility and retrieve their memory sticks in order to complete the tally.<\/p>\n
The special election has drawn a flood of outside spending, almost entirely on behalf of Mr. Wilson. The race was widely viewed as a proxy conflict between Mr. Mamdani and the Council speaker, Julie Menin, a more moderate Democrat who endorsed Mr. Wilson. The mayor and the speaker have clashed on a range of issues, including the budget and a bill he vetoed last week that dealt with security at protests held near educational facilities.<\/p>\n
Mr. Mamdani and Ms. Menin have each made several campaign appearances in the district alongside their preferred candidates. But the unclear result on Tuesday left that conflict in a state of suspended animation for the next week.<\/p>\n
The contest on Tuesday in the city\u2019s Third District was held to determine who would complete the term of Erik Bottcher, who vacated the seat when he was elected to the State Senate earlier this year.<\/p>\n
That term runs through December.<\/p>\n
The two candidates are expected to face off again in June, when a primary will determine who will receive the Democratic nomination to run this November for a longer term, lasting through 2029.<\/p>\n
Ms. Boylan in 2020 became the first woman to accuse former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of sexual harassment<\/a>. Mr. Cuomo denied her allegations and those from nearly a dozen other women, but they nevertheless led to his resignation as governor the following year.<\/p>\n Mr. Cuomo sought to return to public life last year with a mayoral bid that turned into a bitter, monthslong fight with Mr. Mamdani. The mayor\u2019s decision to endorse Mr. Cuomo\u2019s most high-profile accuser suggested some lingering animosity between the two men.<\/p>\n Ms. Boylan, 42, was an enthusiastic backer of Mr. Mamdani, a democratic socialist, in the mayoral race, and she joined the Democratic Socialists of America after he won the Democratic primary last June. She previously ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2020 and for Manhattan borough president in 2021.<\/p>\n