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November 4, 2025

The Sprint for City Hall

The critical Nov. 4 election for New York City mayor is here.

Good afternoon and welcome back to The Sprint for City Hall, our second-to-last edition of this limited-run newsletter.

We’ve made it to Election Day! If you haven’t voted yet, you can find your poll site here.

In today’s newsletter, we’ll share seven of our biggest questions about the race, check in on some key demographic groups and test your knowledge of how celebrities feel about the election. We’ll be covering every twist and turn of Election Day over here. Let us know how things are looking in your neighborhood.

In the meantime, we’ll start with the headlines.

Waiting to cast ballots at Brooklyn Borough Hall on Sunday, the final day of early voting. Dave Sanders for The New York Times

Voters at Public School 217 in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, on Tuesday. Todd Heisler/The New York Times

CHARTING THE RACE

Seven big questions for Election Day

Who’s going to win? Will this race be remotely close? Will there be any surprises?

Beyond those obvious — but important! — questions, I chatted with political strategists, voters and colleagues who have been covering the race closely to come up with a few other big things to watch tonight and in the days to come as we learn more about the electorate.

In no particular order:

1. If Mamdani wins, will he break 50 percent? That may be challenging to achieve in a three-way race, but the eventual winner’s margin of victory will signal how much political capital he has headed into City Hall — and how divided the city is over the result. It only gets harder from here.

2. How does Trump’s endorsement of Cuomo affect the race? You could argue this several ways.

The move could backfire with still-undecided Democratic voters who dislike their options, pushing them to embrace Mamdani at the last minute. It could also convince some Republicans to back Cuomo instead of Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee, on Election Day. But it’s unclear how many voters are movable, one way or the other, at this very late stage in the race.

3. Parts of New York City shifted hard toward Trump last year. How do those neighborhoods vote now? In 2024, Trump made gains among Chinese and Orthodox Jewish communities in Brooklyn, in heavily Chinese and South Asian neighborhoods in Queens and among heavily Hispanic communities in the Bronx and Queens, we reported at the time.

It will be fascinating to see how those areas vote this year, and how the generational divide may shape the outcomes in some of those communities. I’m also curious to learn what turnout looks like in these neighborhoods, especially among Hispanic voters who have been shifting away from Democrats nationally.

4. Are there quiet Cuomo voters? I met a few of those New Yorkers at an early polling site in Park Slope, Brooklyn, last week. These are voters who don’t want to argue with their liberal neighbors, but oppose Mamdani’s candidacy and voted against him. Cuomo will need a lot of these voters if he’s going to do better than most polls suggest.

5. Did Mamdani start a real movement? Mamdani has plainly energized a lot of young people, some of whom have drawn parallels to Obama’s rise in 2008.

Where do they put their energy after the election if Mamdani wins? Do they become newly engaged in city politics — or move on after the mayor’s race? Alternatively, if the race is closer than expected or there’s an upset, will their enthusiasm wane?

6. Was Sliwa more of a spoiler or a stronger-than-expected candidate — or both? Sliwa’s center-left and Republican critics contended that he had no path to victory, and that his candidacy only served to split the anti-Mamdani portion of the electorate.

Sliwa, who memorably and colorfully rejected entreaties to drop out of the race, ran a high-energy campaign until the end. On Tuesday, we’ll see how much appeal the Republican actually had.

7. How does this race resonate nationally? In some ways, the answer is already coming into focus, at least if Mamdani wins.

His candidacy has inspired other young left-wing candidates around the country. Democrats broadly are racing to emulate his affordability message — even if they are far more divided over whether to embrace the messenger. And Republicans believe they have found their next boogeyman.

These themes and tensions are likely to kick into high gear after Election Day if Mamdani triumphs. If he doesn’t, prepare for an ugly intraparty Democratic battle over what happened.

Parts of New York City shifted hard toward President Trump last year. How will those neighborhoods vote now? Dave Sanders for The New York Times

NUMBER OF THE DAY

1969

That’s the last time turnout in a New York City mayor’s race hit two million votes, when Mayor John V. Lindsay won re-election. Will turnout this year come close? That’s another big thing we’re watching. What we know so far: More than 735,000 New Yorkers cast early ballots, the highest early in-person turnout ever for a nonpresidential election in New York.

Has Mamdani made up ground with Black voters?

My colleagues Maya King and Benjamin Oreskes did a deep dive on some of the very complex constituencies that may help determine the race (Jewish and Muslim voters, Black voters, South Asian voters, young voters and Republicans). I asked Maya about what she was watching.

Katie Glueck: If you had to pick one constituency that you still had the most questions about, what would you say?

Maya King: I’m really curious to see how much ground Mamdani has made up with Black voters. We wrote about how a majority did not support him in the primary, yet he still won — an unusual dynamic in a heavily Democratic city like New York. While polling shows he has made inroads with Black voters since then, it is still unclear how much support he might ultimately capture from one of the most important constituencies in the Democratic Party.

Andrew Cuomo on the Upper East Side on Monday. It remains to be seen how the endorsement he received from Trump will affect the race. Amir Hamja for The New York Times

QUIZ

Which of the following celebrities supported Cuomo?

Scroll to the bottom to see the answer.

We want to hear from you

Thanks so much for following along with The Sprint for City Hall. Once we know who won, I’d love to hear about your reactions. What questions do you have for the mayor-elect? And today, how’s your poll site looking? Please be in touch — I’m at katie.glueck@nytimes.com.

The answer to today’s quiz: Jerry Seinfeld voted for Cuomo. The rest of the listed celebrities are Mamdani fans.

Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times Ask us your questions about New York City’s mayoral race. →

Thank you for reading today’s edition of The Sprint for City Hall. Look for the final edition in your inbox on Saturday.

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