NYC Mayor/2021 Megathread

[Skill and Chance]

IMO all signs point to Yang by a bigger margin than expected.

[Skill and Chance]

I'm surprised Maya Wiley isn't connecting more. Why is that?

I think she'd be a really strong candidate if the race was happening in 2019 or in 2022. Her campaign would really thrive at a time when you could do a lot of grassroots outreach among young people and progressives in all 5 boroughs and get a lot of media attention out of it.

But sadly the ground game is kneecapped because of COVID, and Yang is taking up what little media oxygen there is for the race.

Ehhhh, between Warren 2020 and Cruz 2016 in primaries, and Clinton 2016 vs. Biden 2020 in the GE, I think it's time to accept that ground game is vastly overrated.  A likely Yang win in NYC would just solidify that.  A low turnout primary in the densest city in the country is where you could make the strongest argument that ground game should be decisive.  If it isn't, it's time to accept that "ground game" is mostly a permanent employment program for consultants and activists.

[Skill and Chance]

I'm surprised Maya Wiley isn't connecting more. Why is that?

I think she'd be a really strong candidate if the race was happening in 2019 or in 2022. Her campaign would really thrive at a time when you could do a lot of grassroots outreach among young people and progressives in all 5 boroughs and get a lot of media attention out of it.

But sadly the ground game is kneecapped because of COVID, and Yang is taking up what little media oxygen there is for the race.

Ehhhh, between Warren 2020 and Cruz 2016 in primaries, and Clinton 2016 vs. Biden 2020 in the GE, I think it's time to accept that ground game is vastly overrated.  A likely Yang win in NYC would just solidify that.  A low turnout primary in the densest city in the country is where you could make the strongest argument that ground game should be decisive.  If it isn't, it's time to accept that "ground game" is mostly a permanent employment program for consultants and activists.

I'd agree that ground game has diminished as an advantage in social media times, but that's not what I meant there.

Don't you think that if COVID wasn't happening, this race would be very different?

Yang's biggest advantage is name recognition. That's accentuated when most people are at home and don't want to go out and knock on doors for candidates.

I'd wager that the election would be a lot more competitive if things were normal. Especially because of RCV, which I think promotes voter outreach a lot more than FPTP since a pleasant interaction means a voter may change their 2nd or 3rd choice and that would actually matter.

Not really.

If anything, RCV makes voter outreach/turnout operations less effective.  It effectively over-represents high info voters and the very politically engaged, because low info and infrequent voters are much more likely to just check their top choice and walk out.  It's the main reason I prefer separate runoff elections over RCV.  Making voting more complicated is generally bad.

[Skill and Chance]

https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1389443459803664387

This actually doesn't look great for Yang, especially in his own internal?

[Skill and Chance]

Yang might blow this after all.

[Skill and Chance]

I actually think backroom deals on preferences are not very democratic. Maybe not racist, but it is still pretty skeezy what Yang and Garcia did...
I think RCV has been a failure here in NYC - at least in terms of stated goals (less negative campaigning, fx)

Edit: my top 3 most likely to win 1. Adams, 2. Wiley, 3. Garcia
I would rather have Wiley or Adams over Garcia, I think.

I do not have a way of ujderstanding why so many of you dislile Adams outside of the way that he represents a certain type of outer boro black politics that is absolutely alien to most of you.

The problem with RCV is that it effectively gives highly educated and politically active people extra votes.  A significant percentage of people who don't follow politics closely and are unfamiliar with RCV will just check the box for their favorite person and then walk out.   

Just have a separate runoff if no one gets a majority.  A runoff election is intuitive and doesn't require a detailed mathematical explanation of how to make sure your vote fully counts!

[Skill and Chance]

Data For Progress, the pollster that more or less nailed the most important elections last week (mayor, comptroller and Manhattan DA) created an RCV simulation using election-day results.

https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2021/6/28/dfp-ranked-choice-simulations

Kathryn Garcia defeats Eric Adams 54-46 on the final ballot
Eric Adams defeated Maya Wiley 52-48 on the final ballot

Very interesting - have to wonder how many of Yang's voters will rank Garcia higher than Wiley. I feel like that's ultimately going to decide what happens.

Yeah, DFP has Garcia dominating among Yang voters, winning about 60% against both Adams and wiley. I guess we'll see tomorrow night!

If this actually happens (Garcia overtaking Adams in the final round from 3rd place in the initial count), it will be "Stop the Steal" on steroids, rivaling the Florida 2000 level of controversy.

[Skill and Chance]

If Garcia > Adams and Adams > Wiley are both true, then we could well be looking at one of two non-monotonic scenarios in this election:

If Garcia > Wiley in the penultimate round, then a couple percentage points of Adams supporters dishonestly voting for Wiley instead of Adams could have caused an Adams victory (if Adams' final round margin over Wiley would have been greater than Garcia's margin over Wiley in the penultimate round).

If Wiley > Garcia in the penultimate round, then a couple percentage points of Wiley supporters dishonestly voting for Adams instead of Wiley could have caused an Adams defeat (if Garcia's final round margin over Adams would have been greater than Wiley's margin over Garcia in the penultimate round).

See, this is what I'm talking about here.  Try explaining this **** to someone who only casually follows politics and has never studied math beyond algebra.  Combine it with the famously slow pace of counting in NYC and the first time the result changes in a high-profile race, the conspiracy theories will never end!

I think runoffs are a great check on extreme base oriented candidates, but just have a normal second round between the top 2 that can be explained in one sentence.

[Skill and Chance]

Here we go...