Halfway through early voting, older New Yorkers continue to make up a slim majority of those who have cast ballots in the city’s mayoral race so far, according to a data analysis by the Daily News.
Wednesday marked the fifth day of polls being open and the halfway mark of early voting in the pivotal Nov. 4 election, in which Democratic front-runner Zohran Mamdani is facing off against independent Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa.
As of the 8 p.m. poll closures Wednesday, 372,111 New Yorkers had voted, Board of Elections tabulations say. In the 2021 mayoral election, the first citywide contest to offer early voting, a total of 169,879 people cast ballots early over the entire nine-day span it was available, meaning the 2025 turnout has already shattered the previous record.
Of the early votes cast as of Wednesday night, about 189,000 came from New Yorkers 55 or older, Board of Elections demographics data reviewed by The News shows. The remaining roughly 183,000 early votes came from those younger than 55.
That means older residents have cast about 51% of the total votes so far. That breakdown has stayed effectively consistent since early voting started last weekend.
The data doesn’t show how the New Yorkers in question voted but the high turnout from older residents could benefit Cuomo, the runner-up candidate who has consistently polled better with that segment of the population.
Still, election experts cautioned against assuming high turnout among older voters is an automatic boon for Cuomo, especially given how narrow of a margin by which they outpace younger generations at the polls so far.
Mary Snow, an assistant polling director at Quinnipiac University, noted Cuomo’s competing for the older vote with Sliwa, who’s also polling relatively well with that constituency. There’s no guarantee Sliwa isn’t siphoning off votes from that population, potentially undercutting momentum for Cuomo.
“Yes, Andrew Cuomo does fare better with older voters than he does younger voters, but so do Curtis Sliwa,” said Snow.
Jerry Skurnik, a veteran of the Ed Koch administration who specializes in election analytics, said Cuomo will likely need to see even higher rates of turnout from older voters in order to be confident he’s compensating for Mamdani’s domination in the younger age brackets.
“Polls show Cuomo narrowly ahead among older voters but Mamdani ahead by much larger numbers among younger voters. If they are accurate, Cuomo needs to have older voters turn out at an extremely higher rate than younger voters,” Skurnik said before stressing that making definitive predictions off of the demographics data is difficult.
“The only thing I’m confident about is that the early voting numbers mean that we are going to have an impressive turnout,” he said.
In a potential worrying sign for Cuomo, there are indications that younger voters are beginning to come out in larger numbers. A majority of voters who cast ballots on Wednesday — about 39,000 — were younger than 55, compared to about 35,000 who were older than that, The News’ review found.
Additionally, on Wednesday, residents between 25 and 34 comprised almost 18% of the daily turnout, the first time this election voters in that bracket outpaced voters between 55 and 64, who came in at 17% for that day, according to a Gothamist analysis.
Mamdani, who defeated Cuomo in June’s Democratic mayoral primary by nearly 13%, has become known for galvanizing predominantly young voters after running a high-energy campaign centered on policy proposals to make the city more affordable. A democratic socialist, Mamdani has consistently faced a polling deficit with older New Yorkers, some of whom are wary of his unabashed left-wing politics.
Despite the uncertainty around the data, Cuomo has publicly touted the news that a narrow majority of early voters are in the upper age brackets, portraying it as a sign he’s pulling ahead.
“There’s fear in this city, there’s anger in this city, there’s frustration in this city. It’s all percolating and you can feel it up there. And I feel very good, because New Yorkers, at the end of the day, they want a mayor who can do the job,” Cuomo told reporters earlier this week of the surge in turnout from older residents.
According to the polls, it remains Mamdani’s race to lose, with Cuomo trailing him by double digits in just about every survey.
Emerson College/PIX11/The Hill dropped a poll Thursday showing Mamdani besting Cuomo by a 50%-25% margin, with Sliwa clinching 21%. That poll posed an outlier as most surveys have predicted a more narrow margin of between roughly 10% and 16%.
Early voting continues through Sunday. Polls are then closed Monday before they reopen again Tuesday for Election Day.
