Election Eve

And election nerves

It's finally starting to look really possible that Zohran Mamdani will win the Democratic primary in the New York mayoral race: in its final poll before Election Day tomorrow, Emerson College's simulation of the rank choice outcome has him winning, for the first time, in the eighth round, 52-48. It's a nice illustration of how the system works, with the lowest-performing candidates dropped out and the votes distributed to voters' second and third and so on choices, until one of the candidates crosses the 50% mark:

I had a sense of how something like this could happen; Cuomo, running especially on name recognition, is mostly a first choice, more often of voters who didn't rank anybody else—he has fewer votes to pick up in the subsequent rounds. Mamdani, attractive but seen as a bit of a gamble, gets a lot of third and especially second choices behind candidates seen as safer, Adrienne Adams and Brad Lander, the best qualified by conventional measures. I can see my own vote (in the end I decided to rank Lander first) moving into Mamdani's column in the last two rounds. In that big jump putting Mamdani over the top, you can see how the cross-endorsement strategy was supposed to work.

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But I didn't really believe it would work, in the first place because it didn't seem to be working in earlier polls, and in the second place because of Cuomo's rather Republican strategy of sliming Mamdani with antisemitism, in the atmosphere of last year's Gaza protests, to mobilize a voting bloc against the Muslim candidate, which has been emerging for a while. I got an inkling a couple of months ago, walking up Amsterdam Avenue, when a guy accosted me ("Are you Jewish?") and tried to interest me in some kind of new organization where Jewish people could get together to discuss "issues" of concern to the community, as if no such organizations existed already—could this be anything like the "Never Again, NOW!" Israel-support thing Andrew Cuomo has been touting since last summer and that doesn't yet show any particular signs of getting off the ground?

The group, Never Again, NOW!, offered an ambitious slate of plans for the summer and fall. In a speech outlining them at a synagogue in the Hamptons last summer, Mr. Cuomo likened himself to a “Shabbos goy,” a non-Jew who traditionally helps Jewish people on the Sabbath.

Almost a year later, though, the Cuomo group’s promises appear to have amounted to little beyond a few private informational receptions and opinion essays.

(The Shabbos goy's function is to help people not act, as by switching the lights on and off for them when sabbath observance forbids them to do it themselves.)

Or maybe JEWISH VOTERS UNITE, from whom I got a flyer in the mail in May warning me that ANTISEMITISM IS ON THE BALLOT, or related Jewish Voters Action Network, which registered some 7,000 Jewish Republicans and Independents as Democrats in April, in time for the coming primary?

a big Jewish turnout could aid ex-Gov., Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic mayoral front-runner in recent polls, as well as former city Comptroller Scott Stringer and current Comptroller Brad Lander, both of whom are Jewish.

In fact, a poll by The Forward in early June found that Mamdani is the second most popular mayoral candidate, after Cuomo, among Jewish voters:

Younger Jewish voters, particularly those under 45, are more likely to prioritize progressive domestic policies, such as Mamdani’s proposals for free city buses, rent freezes for stabilized tenants, and city-owned grocery stores to lower living costs, over his foreign policy stances. These voters, often aligned with Reform or secular Jewish communities, see Mamdani’s platform as a continuation of the Jewish tradition of tikkun olam (repairing the world) through social and economic justice.

I voted on Friday, around noon, with a crowd of what seemed mostly like older people. The woman in front of me was 98 (tiny and frail, but with beautiful hair), according to the man accompanying her, who I imagine was her son, nearly 80 and very deaf himself. I was able to assist them in getting her a chair while she waited, which was a mitzvah—there were a bunch of difficult cases, and it took a long time. When I was done voting I walked home by a high school playground chain link fence and a display of campaign posters at the required distance from the polling place, and a small Latino man who wanted to know who I'd voted for, not in the mayoral race but the one for public advocate. He was supporting the Queens assembly member Jenifer Rajkumar against incumbent democratic socialist Jumaane Williams, who he said did not do things for all the groups. "Jewish people don't like him," he told me. "I'm Jewish," I said, "and I voted for Jumaane." "I've talked to 300 people today," he replied, and you're the only one."

Which made me pretty gloomy all weekend, that and Trump's Iran war (which made a monkey of me and my predictions, among other more dire consequences, but this poll is very good news, as well as the really extraordinary early vote turnout of more than 380,000 votes, twice as many as 2021 (it'll probably be a week before we get bankable results, and that's going to be pretty stressful too). I have a sense that Cuomo’s strategy is backfiring.