Eric Adams has an early lead. Andrew Yang acknowledges

NEW YORK – The Big Apple polls closed New Yorkers voted Tuesday to choose their next mayorHowever, with the city’s new ranked selection voting system, don’t expect to know the winner tonight.

Brooklyn Borough President and former police captain Eric Adams was driving Tuesday in Partial results have been released in the New York City mayoral primary, but only first-choice options for early and in-person voting have been released at this time.

With more than 90% of those votes counted, Adams received nearly 31% of the first-choice votes. Former Mayor Bill de Blasio attorney Maya Wiley came in second with 22%; And former sanitation chief Catherine Garcia and entrepreneur-turned-political hopeful, Andrew Yang, came in third and fourth with about 20% and 12%, respectively.

Yang, once considered the toughest competition in the race, ceded on Tuesday night based on the initial comeback. “I’m not going to be the next mayor of New York City,” he said.

Since no candidate is expected to win a majority of first-choice preferences, voter preferences will be redistributed in the ranked selection system, with the first batch of ranked selection results released next week.

Adams will be the city’s second black mayor. He made public safety the central message of his campaign while also appealing to his earlier policy advocacy for reforms in the city’s police department.

With Wiley and Garcia, the city could elect its first female mayor. Yang was the city’s first Asian American mayor.

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At the ballot box, voters can choose up to five candidates. While calculating the redistribution of voter preferences when candidates are disqualified is done electronically, state law allows absentee ballots to flow over the next week. Those votes may be the deciding factor in the fiercely contested race.

After releasing the ranked selection results for early and in-person voting, the city’s Board of Elections expects to release ranked selection preferences for absentee ballots beginning July 6. Some estimates say the winner won’t be known until mid-July.

The crowded Democratic field featured eight major candidates and centered on issues of crime and New York’s recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It’s really one of the most, if not the most important, elections we’ve seen simply because of (the pandemic) and how it’s going to come back,” said Syd Davidoff, former chief adviser to Mayor John Lindsay. “Then the question becomes: Who is the best in this city for the next two years?”

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The Democratic incumbent, de Blasio, left office after reaching the limit of his term. He did not endorse any candidate and no candidate, except for Yang, said they wanted to endorse him.

Adams has been the front-runner for most of the race and has been ahead in several major polls taken in recent weeks. In addition to his message of public safety, the Brooklyn native also pledged to address racial inequality in the city. However, He also faced harsh criticism distance Politico Report Detailed discrepancies in his ownership and campaign records.

Meanwhile, Willie was the progressive candidate as the race narrowed and won the support of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, DN.Y. Wiley pledged to funnel some of the police money into mental health and homelessness services as well as schools.

More on Maya Wiley:The New York City mayoral race is all about police and crime. Will he give Ocasio-Cortez endorsement to progressives?

Yang and Garcia, who had recently formed a kind of alliance amid the ranked selection system, were more reflective of Adams on the matter of policing. Garcia has also made climate change a big part of her campaign. Yang promised to bring a local copy of his universal basic income plan to New York, which he ran in the 2020 presidential race.

There are more than 3 million registered Democratic voters compared to about half a million registered Republican voters in the city, so the winner of the Democratic primary is likely to run for victory in November.

In the Republican race, the founder of the Guardian Angels, Curtis Sliwa, was led by businessman Fernando Matteo.

More than 200,000 voters have requested absentee ballots, and more than 87,000 voters have been returned as of Monday.

Scott Stringer was fifth to the front of the group in the Democratic race, Diane Morales sixth, Ray McGuire seventh and Shawn Donovan eighth. Several secondary candidates also received fragments of the vote.

The race has also been set for the Manhattan District Attorney. office holder, Cyrus Vance, step down While his office continues to investigate former President Donald Trump and his family’s business.

Former federal prosecutor Alvin Bragg was narrowly leading Tali Farhadian Weinstein, who is also the former federal prosecutor, on Tuesday. Those elections did not use ranked-choice voting.