Ranked Choice Voting In New York City’S Mayoral Election

In 2021, New York City used ranked choice voting to elect a Democratic mayoral candidate. There were 13 candidates running in the primary, but I used five candidates many considered “most viable” to create this explainer.

This animation was not intended to be a prediction of the primary results — just a quick demonstration of the RCV counting process! Eric Adams was, in fact, declared the winner of the 2021 Democratic Mayoral Primary, but the final rounds of elimination looked nothing like my own demonstration.