NYC sees massive increase in early voting in mayoral election compared to 2021
Almost 300,000 people have voted early in New York City's 2025 election -- which features a closely-watched mayor's race that has grabbed headlines nationwide -- as of the end of the fourth day of early voting on Tuesday, according to the New York City Board of Elections.
That marks a major increase from the 55,106 voters who voted by the end of the fourth day of early voting in 2021's mayoral election. More than five times as many votes have been cast in the 2025 race as of the end of Tuesday.
Out of the city's five boroughs, Brooklyn leads with the most early votes so far with 92,035 people having voted early there as of Tuesday night. By comparison, at the end of the fourth day of early voting in 2021, only 13,831 people had voted in Brooklyn.
Staten Island and the Bronx, meanwhile, are lagging behind. As of the end of the fourth day of early voting in 2025, 22,417 votes were cast on Staten Island and 24,919 were cast in the Bronx.
What this means for Democratic candidate State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, independent candidate former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, or Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa isn't quite certain, according to Laura Tamman, a political science professor at Pace University.
"It's hard to say definitively what is happening with only borough-wide numbers available," she told ABC News on Monday.
"However, the proportionally low turnout in Staten Island and the Bronx is not great news for Andrew Cuomo. For him to have a chance, he would need those areas to be showing up in proportionally higher numbers than Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan," Tamman added. "Given that Andrew Cuomo has consistently trailed Mamdani by double digits, Andrew Cuomo continues to appear highly unlikely to win the election."
That said, early voting in 2025 is not entirely an apples-to-apples comparison with 2021.
Early voting was first implemented in New York in 2019, so 2021 was the first mayoral race it was used for. Many voters may have also still been getting used to voting in person again after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Additionally, the 2021 matchup between Democratic candidate Eric Adams and Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa was a much more traditional matchup, without a high-profile independent in the race, and Adams was effectively on a glide path in the Democratic-dominated Big Apple, according to Tamman.
"Turnout in the 2021 contest between Eric Adams and Curtis Sliwa was lower because the race was viewed as less competitive than this year's contest," she said.
ABC News' Averi Harper, Emily Guskin and Ivan Pereira contributed to this report.
