Early voting days are over – and they’re young.
New Yorkers under 40 years old accounted for a whopping 40% all early voting ballots cast, data shows – a potential good sign for mayoral contender Zohran Mamdani’s chances in the Democratic primary, a Post analysis found.
The early voting tallies from the city’s Board of Elections dovetail with a shock poll’s results showing the Democratic socialist Mamdani narrowly beating former Gov. Andrew Cuomo after eight rounds of ranked-choice voting.
The typical age for New Yorkers who cast ballots during the nine-day early voting period from June 14-22 was 43, the BOE data show.
First-time voters also jumped significantly, with 22,000 ballots cast from New Yorkers who are newly registered this year.
The tally is nearly 10,000 more first-time votes than in the last mayoral primary during 2021, a surge perhaps reflective of Mamdani’s ground game getting out the vote.
Mamdani, a 33-year-old Queens assemblyman, has consistently polled better with younger voters under 50, according to polls throughout the campaign.
The stunning survey from Emerson College Polling/Pix 11/The Hill released Monday found those voters back Mamdani by a 2-1 margin, while Cuomo leads among older Dems.
In total, roughly 385,000 New Yorkers cast their ballots early — compared to the 191,000 who did so before 2021’s mayoral primary.
During the last day alone, roughly 80,000 voters cast their ballots early, the data shows.
A source close to Cuomo’s team sounded the alarm ahead of Tuesday’s primary, calling out the campaign’s lack of coordination on the ground compared to the Mamdani-backing, mostly youthful Democratic Socialists of America.
“There is no coordinated GOTV (get out the vote),” the source said about Cuomo’s campaign.
“If they don’t turn out those votes, they lose.”
The source said that Cuomo’s internal polling shows him winning by just 6 or 7 points, “which tells me they can lose.”
“The unions are concerned that they wasted millions of dollars to help Cuomo get elected and now they could be stuck with Mamdani,” the source said.
Another Democratic source also blasted Cuomo’s campaign for only recently launching its field operation, saying: “you don’t do that so last minute, so you know where to double down.”
The source with knowledge charged that the ex-gov “has run one of the worst campaigns I’ve ever seen,” blowing the substantial lead he had when he first announced his campaign in March — and millions of dollars.
“What you have is rich people in the Rolodex who gave money,” the operative said. “It’s not like they are bringing out apparatus for him. They are holding their noses.”
The ex-gov’s spokesman pushed back on the criticism and contended the campaign’s daily internal polling has Cuomo up by double digits, pointing to a survey released last week.
“This is a campaign of work horses, not show ponies,” said spokesman Rich Azzopardi. “And I’d like to remind people that the last time we ran against a Silver Spoon Socialist in a Trump backlash year, we actively expanded the electorate and Governor Cuomo ended up getting an historical, all-time high number of votes.”
— Additional reporting by Matthew Fischetti and Carl Campanile
