🌅 NYC’s Democratic Primary

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SOURCE

Kalshi

WHAT TO KNOW

• Traders on Sunrise Stat partner Kalshi think progressive candidate Zohran Mamdani will win today’s Democratic primary in the New York City mayoral race. Mamdani’s biggest challenger is former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, who resigned as governor in 2021 after more than a dozen women accused him of sexual harassment.

WHY IT MATTERS

• Until Monday, Cuomo—who’s backed by a billionaire-led $25 million Super PAC, the largest in the city’s history—was the clear frontrunner in the race, with Kalshi traders giving him anywhere from a 60% to 90% chance to win dating back to the end of May. However, as public polls began rolling in on Monday, traders flipped the odds, narrowly putting Mamdani ahead of Cuomo.

CONNECT THE DOTS

• Whether Mamdani actually wins will come down to the city’s ranked choice voting system, which allows voters to rank the candidates in order of preference (first choice, second choice, third choice, and so on), rather than forcing people to make an all-or-nothing decision with their vote. In ranked choice systems, any candidate that receives more than half of the first choice votes wins the race (just like traditional elections). However, if no candidate receives a majority, the winner is decided by eliminating the candidate with the fewest first choice votes and redistributing those votes to each corresponding voter’s second choice. This happens in successive rounds until a single candidate receives a majority.