Midway through the early voting period, senior citizens in New York City are making up a slight majority of those participating in the mayoral election, as revealed by a Daily News data analysis.
Wednesday signaled the fifth day of early voting and marked the midpoint for the upcoming critical election on November 4th. In this race, Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani is up against independent candidate Andrew Cuomo and Republican contender Curtis Sliwa.
By the time polls closed at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, 372,111 New Yorkers had already cast their votes, according to figures from the Board of Elections. This turnout has already surpassed the early voting numbers from the 2021 mayoral election, where 169,879 people voted early over the nine days it was available, setting a new record for 2025.
Analyzing the early votes cast by Wednesday evening, data from the Board of Elections indicates that approximately 189,000 of these ballots were from individuals aged 55 and older. Meanwhile, around 183,000 votes came from the under-55 demographic.
Older voters have thus far contributed about 51% of the total ballots. This distribution has remained steady since early voting commenced over the past weekend.
While the data doesn’t disclose the voting choices of these New Yorkers, the significant turnout among older citizens may potentially favor Cuomo, who has consistently polled stronger with this age group.
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.
