NYC Mayor/2021 Megathread

[jaichind]

The whole Yang-Garcia maneuver seems like a big mistake to me.  I really do not like any of the candidates and if forced would most likely reluctantly be for Adams so I do not care that much either way.  But when you openly collude like you are just pushing up Adam's chances which I assume is the opposite of what they want.

[jaichind]

Looks like Manhattan is overrepresented in the count so far so Adams likely to be above 30% which would mostly match pre-election polls.

[jaichind]

Bloomberg News report that of the absentee ballots returned to the Board of Elections by Tuesday, 46% came from state Assembly districts that Adams won, followed by 31% from districts Garcia won.

[jaichind]

I get that some absentee ballots may need to be cured, but that will be a tiny percentage of said votes.  Why cannot they count and release the absentee ballots that does not need to be cured versus releasing results at the end of the curing process.

[jaichind]

So are we getting a total dump on Tuesday of all of the absentees then

No, we are getting the RCV simulation of the in-person ballots. Absentees come later.

Is that not a waste of time since they have to redo the RCV distribution once the absentees votes comes in and counted ?

[jaichind]

I find it completely ridiculous how long it takes to count votes in some american states (especially when VBM is involved). Seriously, why doesn't every state do like Florida which typically has over 95% of votes counted within a few hours (even though it also has VBM)?

I think the difference is the issue of allowing "curing" VBM ballots in case there are problems.  That adds weeks to the process.

[jaichind]

You probably should have all of your ballots in to run RCV calculations in case it changes results in an earlier round in a way that affects the final result (in particular, see the DFP calculations that suggest that Garcia and Wiley will be almost exactly tied in the second-to-last round -- imagine the chaos if they report Adams would win a top two vs. Wiley and then a week later have to say, wait, actually Garcia beats Wiley to the top two and wins against Adams), but that shouldn't prevent release of first-round results.

If would be hysterical if  Adams beats  Wiley in the RCV final round but after some more ballots are cured if shifts Adam's final round opponent from  Wiley to Garcia who went on to beat Adams.  I think the Adam's camp cry of fraud would go on for weeks if not months.

[jaichind]

[jaichind]

I have no idea why they decided to release the result this way.  It seems to me they should first
a) count the absentee ballots once all of them are cured and then release the combined first round results then
b) do the round by round RCV and then release the results

it is not clear that the sequence of candidates being eliminated would be same once you add in the absentee ballots so this entire exercise  is a waste of time

[jaichind]

Yeah, it doesn't really make sense to release any RCV numbers before the total initial account (early + in person + election day + absentee) are all accounted for.

Also, why are we not getting absentee #s for another week? Wtf is this weekly rollout thing they are doing?

I think it is because of the NY dumb rule that they have to give people a chance to cure their absentee ballot before releasing the results.  My take is even if you want a long timeframe for people to cure their ballots there is no reason not to count and release all absentee ballots that do not need to be cured (which has to be 99% of them).  Delaying releasing those results just make people think you have something to hide.

[jaichind]

Betting markets have Adams leading again which seems.... very off

Never make the mistake of thinking that said markets make any decisions on the basis of logic.

They're trying to say that the absentee ballots that have been processed thru so far are unimpressive for Garcia, which A) would go against conventional wisdom, B) did not seem the case from the 24K or whatever it was that were talked about and C) they haven't all been formally counted yet

Perhaps the punter logic is that the second and third preference votes will not be as favorable for Garcia vis-a-vis Adams as the in day votes.

[jaichind]

Looking at just the absentee votes it is true that Garcia did better than her election day vote but it also seems true that she got a smaller share of Yang and then Wiley second preference votes than election day votes which mostly canceled out most of her relative edge in absentee votes.