By Selwyn Duke

He wants the police defunded, a full rent freeze, city-owned grocery stores, a $30 minimum wage, funding for illegals, millions for “gender-affirming” care — and more. Some people call him a Marxist; he calls himself a “democratic socialist.” But there’s something different still that New York City’s Zohran Mamdani may be called next January according to a new poll.

Mayor.

This NYC mayoral-race outcome would, too, likely all be due to the Big Apple’s new “ranked choice” voting system. That’s the convoluted model that in 2022 gave Alaska, a Republican state, its first Democratic congressman in almost five decades. (The GOP did manage to retake the seat last year.)

And normally we could say we’ll know the bad or worse news today, June 24, as it’s NYC’s primary Election Day. But with that ranked-choice voting — with its counting and counting and recounting² — results may take another week. (Interestingly, the land of Mamdani’s ancestors, India, counted its votes last year and declared election results on the same day. India is the world’s most populous country, too, with 1.46 billion people. NYC’s population is 8.48 million.)

Ranked Choice’s Rank Choice

CBS New York reports on the story:

A new Emerson College Polling/PIX11/The Hill poll has Mamdani neck and neck with [Andrew] Cuomo, with Cuomo slightly ahead in the first round. But Mamdani ultimately beats Cuomo in its ranked choice voting simulation after eight rounds[!].

The poll has Cuomo with 35% in the first round, followed by Mamdani with 32%. Comptroller Brad Lander is the only other candidate with double digit support at 13%, followed by City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams with 8% and Scott Stringer with 3%.

… The trouble for Cuomo occurs in the ranked choice voting simulation, which the Emerson poll shows Mamdani picking up 18 points as the rounds go by, as opposed to 12 points for Cuomo. That’s enough to put Mamdani over the 50% threshold by the eighth round, according to the poll.

This is, too, from a candidate who once was an also-ran. As the Tampa Free Press informs:

Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, highlighted Mamdani’s impressive trajectory: “Over five months, Mamdani’s support has surged from 1% to 32%, while Cuomo finishes near where he began. In the ranked-choice simulation, Mamdani gains 18 points compared to Cuomo’s 12, putting him ahead in the final round for the first time in an Emerson poll.”

Bad Santa — on Steroids

Now, George Bernard Shaw famously wrote, “A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.” And Mamdani’s rise is not inexplicable because he hasn’t just promised to rob Peter.

He also has vowed to fleece all his relatives, loot his ancestors’ graves, and take the bone from his dog.

Satire aside, just consider Mamdani’s promise to “freeze rent.” Growing up in NYC and having occasion to still visit someone there, I’ve witnessed (campaign ad below) how he has leaned into this position.

Never mind that we’ve already seen rent control’s ravages in NYC. For example, I remember well, as a child in the 1970s, seeing tracts of burned out buildings in the South Bronx. (Unable to make a profit, landlords instead sometimes resorted to arson to collect on insurance.) But most people don’t know history, even recent history, and Mamdani doesn’t care. He wants power.

The Full Socialist Monty

His plan to get that power is quite extensive, too. As commentator Andrea Widburg warns, calling Mamdani “an open Marxist,” he has among other things promised:

• A full freeze on rents, plus building more public housing (presumably to offset the inevitable diminution in available units)
• “Free” public transportation (a charge on taxpayers)
• Universal public childcare
• A $30 minimum wage by 2030 (which will destroy small businesses and increase reliance on AI and robotics)
• Wealth taxes to fund all his socialist policies (reminding me of the old saying, often attributed to Margaret Thatcher, that “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money”)
• City-owned grocery stores (imagine buying your food from the DMV) [Welcome to Soviet-style “bread” lines?]
• The usual “defund the police in favor of social workers” crime policy (the kind of stuff that caused Democrat cities’ homicide rates to soar)
• $65 million for “gender-affirming care” (don’t get me started)
• Fund illegal aliens and provide them with sanctuary (something that ought to stop all federal funds to NYC)

(Note: Mamdani, a Muslim, also supported a nonprofit that funneled money to terror group Hamas.)

This has, not surprisingly, appealed to young people, “educated” white NYC voters, and Asian-descent residents. They’re the groups supporting Mamdani’s campaign. Blacks, Hispanics, and older voters are largely lining up behind Cuomo. (Cuomo is corrupt but, as Widburg puts it, is “a functional executive.”)

The Democratic primary matters, too, because whoever wins it will almost assuredly win the general election in left-wing NYC.

Making Elections Rocket Science — That Crashes the Rocket

And if Mayor Mamdani becomes reality, you can, again, thank ranked-choice voting. What is it, exactly?

Well, imagine an election where picking a nominee is like solving a Rubik’s Cube while riding a unicycle, reciting pi, and getting a proctology exam. As Ballotpedia explains:

A ranked-choice voting system (RCV) is an electoral system in which voters rank candidates by preference on their ballots. If a candidate wins a majority of first-preference votes, he … is declared the winner. If no candidate wins a majority of first-preference votes, the candidate with the fewest first-preference votes is eliminated. First-preference votes cast for the failed candidate are eliminated, lifting the next-preference choices indicated on those ballots. A new tally is conducted to determine whether any candidate has won a majority of the adjusted votes. The process is repeated until a candidate wins an outright majority.

If you think it sounds as if such complexity invites corruption, you’re not the only one. The kicker is this: One ranked-choice selling point is that it reduces the chances a “radical” will win an election. Yet in NYC, it may take the Big Apple out of the Cuomo frying pan and into the socialist fire. And that, comrades, is a recipe for spoiling the sauce in Hell’s Kitchen or any other.

For those interested, a news segment on Mamdani’s ranked-choice rise is below.

           

                   This article was originally published at The New American.