Ranked Choice Voting in NYC

It would appear to me that even if neither Cuomo nor Sliwa is prepared to drop out of the race, they should at least educate their voters on how to use New York City’s ranked-choice voting (RCV) system to ensure that one of them, rather than Mamdani, wins.

If they both truly believe that Mamdani would be a disaster for the city — and genuinely care about New York — there should be no reason not to cooperate in this way.

Here’s the basic math: Mamdani will likely win a plurality but not a majority of first-round votes. At that point, the lowest-performing candidate will be eliminated, and the second-choice votes from those ballots will be redistributed. If Cuomo’s and Sliwa’s supporters rank only those two candidates, whichever performs better in the early rounds will likely win in the final count.

Remember: you don’t need to rank every candidate — just the ones you actually want to see win, in the order you prefer.

So the question is: Do they dislike each other more than they care about the city?