Eric Adams suggests 'irregularities' as New York City mayor's race tightens

The vote counts and percentages could changed based on absentee ballots.

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams maintains a lead in the preliminary vote count for New York City's Democratic primary for mayor, but preliminary results released by the city on Tuesday suggest a closer-than-expected race that could swing in a different direction when all votes are counted. In the unofficial results for the final round of ranked-choice voting, former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio Maya Wiley slipped to third place, while former Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia moved into second place. "We've been saying from the start this was going to be close," Lindsey Green, a spokesperson for Garcia, told ABC News. "This new information obviously supports that. We feel confident, but there are obviously over 120,000 absentee votes still to be counted and we are going to have patience and wait for every vote to be counted." The new report, which isn't a final tabulation, doesn't include absentee and affidavit ballots -- only in-person votes. The Board of Elections said over 130,000 absentee ballots across parties were returned as of June 28, while over 221,000 had been sent out.