In November, New York City will select its next mayor using Ranked Choice Voting. The fact that ranked choice will be used instead of plurality has major implications for the best strategy to be deployed by those who would like to defeat front-runner Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani.

Mamdani’s Socialist Platform

If he wins and implements his platform, he would be replacing private businesses with government businesses. For example, he would greatly increase the costs of delivery services, forcing them to raise their prices and reduce their deliveries. He claims to have a heart for “deliveristas,” which he would demonstrate by getting many of them fired. Meanwhile, he would replace them with government-owned neighborhood grocery stores, perhaps like the crime-ridden and poorly-stocked grocery store which recently closed in Kansas City.

Similarly, he would freeze the rents of everyone who is living in rent-controlled apartments. As a result, when costs inevitably increase, some landlords will abandon their buildings while others will tear them down. Investment in new buildings will be suppressed. He claims to have a heart for renters, which he would demonstrate by making many of them homeless. Then he would try to give them apartments in the new public housing projects that he would build, perhaps like the crime-ridden and soon-abandoned projects of the 1960s.

How Ranked Choice Voting Works

The key to defeating Mamdani is to understand how ranked choice voting works. Unfortunately, much of the commentary and some of the political strategizing seems to miss the mark by incorrectly applying strategic insights relevant to the plurality voting with which most Americans are more familiar.

For example, a recent analysis claimed that "New York political experts told Newsweek an Adams exit would have been former Governor Andrew Cuomo's likeliest path to victory in the general election." The New York Times noted recently that there have been “negotiations about Mr. Adams potentially suspending his campaign and accepting a nomination to be ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Presidential advisers have also discussed strategies to try to push Mr. Sliwa out of the race.” There is reason to think that these experts and advisors hadn’t fully thought through the ranked choice system.

Under plurality systems the candidate with the most votes wins, and each voter’s ballot lists just one candidate. Thus, if the election were conducted under plurality rules, and Mamdani got the 46 percent of the votes he receives in the most recent New York Times/Siena University poll with the next closest candidate (Andrew Cuomo) receiving 24 percent, then Mamdani would surely win. By implication an essential strategic move for Mamdani opponents would be coordinating around a single opposition candidate, such as Cuomo.

But the NYC mayoral election will be held under ranked choice. In a ranked choice election, each voter casts a ballot that lists their first-choice candidate, but also potentially their second-choice candidate, then potentially their third-choice candidate, and so forth. Then tabulation proceeds through a series of instant runoffs. The candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and their supporter’s votes are reallocated based upon second choices (if the voter ranked a second choice). This process is repeated until some candidate achieves an absolute majority of the votes.

What is the Best Strategy?

Under ranked choice it might make little difference whether third or fourth-place candidates drop out of the race or not: in the instant runoff their supporters’ votes will automatically be reallocated to other candidates. In a plurality contest such efforts would undoubtedly be essential to any possible path to defeating Mamdani. In a ranked choice contest these efforts might help defeat Mamdani, but they could also backfire.

Pushing third and fourth place candidates out of the race might help defeat Mamdani. Such a move might allow Cuomo to focus more effectively on attacking Mamdani (without Cuomo himself facing attacks from the third and fourth place candidates), which could perhaps help him win. It could also help ensure that Cuomo, who appears from polling to have the best chance of beating Mamdani in a head-to-head contest, does not get eliminated earlier in the instant-runoff tabulation.

However, pushing the third and fourth place candidates out could also hurt the effort to defeat Mamdani. Pushing out third and fourth place candidates might lead supporters of these candidates to stay home. If those non-voters would have primarily shifted their votes to Cuomo once their candidate was eliminated in the instant runoff, as the Times poll suggests, then this could hurt Cuomo’s chances.

Suppose that half of Adams supporters wouldn’t bother showing up if Adams wasn’t on the ballot, but had they participated they would have ranked Cuomo second. Their abstention could cost Cuomo the election. In addition, if removal of candidates was seen as having been backed by the Trump administration, this could push some Trump opponents towards supporting Mamdani. Polling does not suggest Trump is particularly popular in New York City: 62 percent of likely voters strongly disapprove of Trump in the Times/Siena poll.

All of this implies that even if Sliwa and Adams stay in the race, Mamdani can be defeated. Indeed, arguably the best strategy for Mamdani opponents is for all the candidates to stay in. If the NYC mayoral contest stays a four-candidate race, a key strategy for opponents of Mamdani would involve tacitly coordinating among the opponents to keep their focus on defeating Mamdani. Cuomo, Adams, and Sliwa should make sure that their supporters know that they want full ballot rankings cast, ones in which Mamdani is always ranked below all three other candidates. This would ensure that the Mamdani opponent who survives the first rounds of the ranked-choice instant runoff has the best chance to win.

Jesse Richman is Associate Professor of Political Science at Old Dominion University. The Richmans co-authored the 2014 book Balanced Trade published by Lexington Books, and the 2008 book Trading Away Our Future published by Ideal Taxes Association.

Image: Bingjiefu He