Who’s Winning the New York Mayor’s Race? Even Pollsters Are Confused.

The city’s new system of ranked-choice voting, along with a crowded field of Democrats, has complicated efforts to do comprehensive voter surveys.

Much of the focus of the New York City mayoral race has centered on one or two perceived front-runners: Andrew Yang, the 2020 presidential candidate, and Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president. But that perception is almost entirely based on what has been an unusually quiet polling season. None of the three major public pollsters in the New York City region have done comprehensive surveys in the mayor’s race. And of those big three pollsters — Quinnipiac University Poll, Marist College Institute for Public Opinion and Siena College Research Institute — two have no intention of conducting any such polls before the June 22 Democratic primary. At this point in 2013, the three pollsters had together put out more than a dozen independent horse-race polls on the Democratic primary.