In just a few days, New Yorkers will head to polling places and post offices to cast their ballots in the upcoming primary elections scheduled for June.
The mayoralty of New York City is a significant focus this year, with eleven candidates competing in the Democratic primary alone.
In addition to the mayoral race, many City Council district seats feature competitive primaries as well.
Once voters have chosen their preferred candidates at the polls, the question on everyone’s mind will be: Did my top picks win?
The answer to that may take some time, as official results could take weeks to finalize.
Here’s a detailed look at what to expect regarding the primary election results, from how votes are counted to the timelines for unofficial and official outcomes.
On primary night, will we receive any results?
Yes, there will be some results available that night, though they may not definitively indicate the winner.
The city Board of Elections plans to release unofficial, first-choice-only vote totals shortly after polls close at 9 p.m. on June 24.
These results will encompass in-person votes cast at polling sites, as well as early mail or absentee ballots received and scanned by June 20, according to Vincent Ignizio, the deputy executive director.
It is important to note that the initial counts will not include votes from affidavit ballots, which will be addressed later in the results process.
The election results will be organized by election and assembly districts, accessible on the city Board of Elections’ website.
For those uncertain about their election district, the Board’s website includes a lookup tool.
However, on election night, voters will not see the ranked-choice tabulation results, where candidates with the fewest votes are eliminated and their votes redistributed.
Could the election potentially be called on Primary Day?
In theory, yes, if a candidate secures more than 50% of the first-choice votes on election night.
This would enable that candidate to avoid the full ranked-choice counting process.
However, with polling indicating a tight race for the mayoral position, such a scenario appears unlikely this year.
So, when can voters expect a clearer picture of the winning candidate?
According to Ignizio, the Board of Elections will provide a preliminary tally of ranked-choice votes one week after election night.
This preliminary report will detail all rounds of vote transfers and candidate eliminations based on non-certified results.
For context, ranked-choice voting permits voters to select up to five candidates in their order of preference.
During the counting process, candidates with the fewest votes are eliminated in each round, and if a voter’s top candidate is eliminated, their vote is transferred to their next preferred candidate.
Participants are not required to rank five candidates; they can stop ranking whenever they choose.
In the 2021 primary election, the ranked-choice results published by the Board of Elections illustrated which candidates were eliminated in each round, the transferred votes each remaining candidate received, and how many rounds were necessary for one candidate to achieve more than 50% of the votes.
Ignizio mentioned that the majority of this data would likely be included in the preliminary tabulations released a week after Primary Day.
When will official results be available, and why is there such a delay?
Officially certified results are expected to be ready three weeks after the election, following the deadline to receive all corrected ballots by July 14.
The elections board plans to move forward with certifying results during its commissioner’s meeting the following day.
The delay in this process is not a consequence of ranked-choice voting; rather, it is rooted in state voting laws that afford voters sufficient time to mail and, if needed, correct their ballots.
As Susan Lerner, the executive director of Common Cause New York, explained,
“Here in New York, we want to be sure that no voter is unnecessarily disenfranchised, and that votes are received and accurately counted.”
For instance, mail-in voters can postmark their ballots on or before Primary Day.
To count toward the official results, these ballots must be received by the Board of Elections within a week.
As of June 11, over 106,000 mail-in ballots had been requested from the city’s Board of Elections, with approximately 18,300 of them returned, equating to about 17%.
For comparison, the 2021 mayoral primary was decided by a narrow margin of just over 7,000 votes from approximately 1 million cast.
Additionally, voters are given the opportunity to correct or “cure” any errors on their ballots once the Board of Elections identifies an issue upon receiving them.
After voters are notified about the need for corrections, they have seven days to complete the cure process and resend their ballots.
There are also instances where voters arrive at polling locations but face obstacles that prevent them from casting their ballots due to discrepancies in their voter files.
In such situations, these voters can request and fill out an affidavit ballot, but these ballots will not be processed until after polls close.
Will the results from the Board of Elections be trustworthy, given the prior voting count issues?
In the last mayoral primary, New Yorkers faced confusion when the elections board announced incorrect preliminary results due to the inclusion of 135,000 test ballots.
This mishap raised concerns about the integrity of the election process.
However, Lerner reassured the public, stating,
“I think it was a very unusual, one-off situation. We haven’t seen anything similar since.”
To prevent similar issues, Ignizio indicated that the Board of Elections has established additional internal checks and balances to ensure the accuracy of the forthcoming results.
With the election drawing closer, New Yorkers await the day when their ballots will be counted, and the anticipation of potential outcomes continues to rise.
image source from：https://www.thecity.nyc/2025/06/17/election-results-explainer-boe-mayoral-race/
