Eric Adams will win Democratic primary for NYC mayor, CNN projects

Adams won 50.5% of the reallocated vote in data released Tuesday by the city's board of elections. The release included all ballots from in-person early and Election Day voters, as well as the vast majority of the almost 126,000 Democratic absentee ballots returned.

CNN projects the remaining uncounted ballots won't be enough for any of the other candidates to catch Adams.

This count published Tuesday night is the fourth -- all of them partial and preliminary -- of the primary vote. The first, after the polls closed on June 22, showed Adams with about a 10 point-lead in first choice preferences among in-person early and Election Day voters over his nearest competitors. The next, pushed out one week ago, was retracted because the BOE mistakenly included test ballots in its tabulation. A day later, last Wednesday, the first ranked-choice dry-run was successfully conducted. It showed Adams' lead dwindling to 2.2% over Garcia in the final round, who advanced ahead of Wiley by fewer than 400 votes.

Earlier in the day, the BOE announced at a meeting that there were 3,699 outstanding ballots waiting to be "cured" -- or corrected because of a minor error -- by voters.

Officials at the gathering downplayed last week's mess, when the board initially published erroneous figures, describing the public's desire for timely information and transparency as being at odds with the BOE's producing accurate data -- a situation one described as a "Catch-22."

They also sought to assure New Yorkers that the final results would not be compromised.

"We were trying to satisfy expectations of quick results with a new way of voting," one BOE official said at the meeting. "What we can say with certainty this issue caused no votes to be lost, no voter disenfranchised, and no incorrect results to be certified."

Voters in the Big Apple had the option to rank up to five of the 13 candidates in the race. Since no candidate won a majority of the initial preference votes outright, the New York City Board of Elections is counting voters' ranked choices to determine the winner.

In ranked-choice voting tabulations, the candidate with the fewest votes after the initial count is eliminated and all ballots for that candidate are reallocated to the next highest-ranked candidate selected. That process continues with the remaining candidates until two are left, with the winner determined by who has the most votes in that final round.

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