New York City mayoral elections facts for kids

The mayor of New York City is elected in early November every four years, in the year immediately following a United States presidential election year, and takes office at the beginning of the following year. The city, which elects the mayor as its chief executive, consists of the five boroughs (Manhattan, The Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island), which consolidated to form "Greater" New York on January 1, 1898.

The consolidated city's first mayor, Robert A. Van Wyck, was elected with other municipal officers in November 1897. Mayoral elections previously had been held since 1834 by the City of Brooklyn and the smaller, unconsolidated City of New York (Manhattan, later expanded into the Bronx).

Eric Adams took office 12:01 AM on January 1, 2022 at a private swearing-in, followed by a public ceremony later in the day. He is the second Black mayor in the history of the city. He follows Bill de Blasio, who served two consecutive terms after being elected in 2013 and for a second term in 2017.

Overview

Scope of this article

The vast bulk of this page's contents is statistical: the main results, citywide and by borough, of each of the 32 elections to the Mayoralty of the City of New York since Greater New York was consolidated from the five boroughs in 1897-1898.

For many years, but not all, there are also results for minor candidates and for the different parties nominating the same major candidate. (Because minor parties' votes are not uniformly available, totals and thus percentages can be slightly inconsistent, either between different elections or between individual boroughs and the entire city in the same election.)

There are brief comments about some of the elections, and separate articles have been written for those of 1917, 1977, 1997, 2001, 2005, and 2009. Different elections are compared in many of the individual notes, in two summary tables and in one specialized table.

New York City's Mayoral elections have been marked by an interplay of factors that are magnified by the size of the population. There was a history of a large socialist vote, there is a history of tension between 'regular' and 'reform' politicians, and there has been electoral fusion, a factor not seen in most of the rest of the United States, with a resulting plethora of smaller, yet influential, third parties.

Terms and term limits (since 1834)

Direct elections to the mayoralty of the unconsolidated City of New York began in 1834 for a term of one year, extended to two years after 1849. The 1897 Charter of the consolidated City doubled the term to four years which could not be renewed. In 1901, the term limit was removed, but the term halved to two years. In 1905, the four-year term, without limit, was restored. (Mayors Fiorello La Guardia, Robert F. Wagner, Jr. and Ed Koch were later able to serve for twelve years each.) In 1993, the voters approved a two-term (eight-year) limit, and reconfirmed this limit when the issue was submitted to referendum in 1996. In 2008, the New York City Council voted to change the two-term limit to three terms (without submitting the issue to the voters). Legal challenges to the Council's action were rejected by Federal courts in January and April, 2009. However, in 2010, yet another referendum, reverting the limit to two terms, passed overwhelmingly.

Principal source: The Encyclopedia of New York City (see Sources below), entries for "charter" and "mayoralty".

1. See List of mayors of New York City.
2. Mayor Strong, elected in 1894, served an extra year because no municipal election was held in 1896, in anticipation of the consolidated City's switch to odd-year elections.
3. George B. McClellan, Jr. was elected to one two-year term (1904–1905) and one four-year term (1906–1909)
4. David Dinkins was not affected by the term limit enacted in 1993 because he had served only one term by 1993 and failed to win re-election.
5. The September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in Manhattan coincided with the primary elections for a successor to Mayor Giuliani, who was completing his second and final term of office. Many were so impressed by both the urgency of the situation and Giuliani's response that they wanted to keep him in office beyond December 31, 2001, either by removing the term limit or by extending his service for a few months. However, neither happened, the primary elections (with the same candidates) were re-run on September 25, the general election was held as scheduled on November 6, and Michael Bloomberg took office on the regularly appointed date of January 1, 2002.
6. On October 2, 2008, Michael Bloomberg announced that he would ask the city council to extend the limit for mayor, council and other officers from two terms to three, and that, should such an extended limit prevail, he himself would seek re-election as mayor. On October 23, the New York City Council voted 29-22 to extend the two-term limit to three terms. (A proposed amendment to submit the vote to a public referendum had failed earlier the same day by a vote of 22-28 with one abstention.)
7. In November 2010, yet another popular referendum, limiting mayoral terms to two, passed overwhelmingly.

Interrupted terms

Mayors John T. Hoffman (1866–68, elected Governor 1868), William Havemeyer (1845–46, 1848–49, and 1873–74), William Jay Gaynor (1910–13), Jimmy Walker (1926–32), and William O'Dwyer (1946–50) failed to complete the final terms to which they were elected. The uncompleted mayoral terms of Hoffman, Walker, and O'Dwyer were added to the other offices elected in (respectively) 1868, 1932, and 1950 [those three elections are listed as "special" in the table below because they occurred before the next regularly scheduled mayoral election; the "regular" mayoral elections of 1874 and 1913, on the other hand, were held on the same day that they would have happened had the mayoralty not become vacant.]

† Became acting mayor as the president of the board of aldermen or (in 1950) city council.

(D) = (Democratic)

(R) = (Republican)

1. Mayor Havemeyer was a Democrat who ran as a Republican against the Democratic Tweed Ring in 1872.
2. Acting Mayors Coman, Vance and Kline did not seek election as mayor.
3. Acting Mayors McKee and Impellitteri were Democrats who lost the Democratic primary to succeed themselves, but still ran in the general election as independents.
4. Elected Mayor Oakey Hall won re-election, while Mayor Wickham did not seek it. Mayors Mitchel and O'Brien lost attempts at re-election, while Mayor Impellitteri did not run for a full term in the 1953 regular general election after losing the Democratic primary.

Summary tables

Principal candidates' City-wide vote since 1897

This chart has several purposes. One is to provide ordinary readers with simple, basic information from a very detailed page. Another is to provide a handy index for those looking for a particular candidate or campaign. (Just click on the year, the candidate's name, or the party name or abbreviation for more details.)

A slightly more sophisticated purpose is to sketch out on one screen the flow of votes across parties and candidates, as affected by fusion, splitting, cross-endorsement and the emergence of new movements or personalities.

Votes in thousands for principal candidates only, generally those winning more than 4.0% (1/25) of the total vote. (Therefore, low votes may not be shown in a particular year for an otherwise significant party, such as Socialist or Conservative. For some of the lesser left-wing candidates before 1945, see #Collapse of the Socialist Party vote below.) Total vote includes that for all candidates and parties, major and minor.

Winner in bold-face in a colored box. Sitting mayor (elected or acting) at the time of the election in italics.

To determine the meaning of abbreviations, click the link or check the list below this table. (Different first names, initials and nicknames may be used for the same person purely to fit the available space.)

Abbreviations used in this table: Fu. or Fus = Fusion, Ind. = Independent, Ind Fu. = Independent Fusion (1989), Independence or Indep'ce = Independence Party of New York, L or Lib. = Liberal Party of New York, Cons. = Conservative Party of New York, ALP = American Labor Party, Soc. = Socialist Party of America, Jeff'n D = The Democracy of Thomas Jefferson (Henry George, 1897), Civic All'ce = Civic Alliance (Hearst 1909), Exp = Experience party (Impellitteri's label for his independent campaign in 1950), Jobs & Educ. = Independent Jobs & Education party (Bloomberg's personal label sharing a ballot line with Independence Party in 2009)

How the boroughs voted

See the table above for more information about the candidates and parties involved. Blue indicates a candidate endorsed by the Democratic Party; pink one endorsed by the Republicans; and buff (or beige) one endorsed by neither party. (Darker shades indicate where a borough voted for a candidate who lost the citywide vote.) In 1981, Edward Koch ran on the tickets of both the Democrats and the Republicans.

Click a year to see the table or tables for that particular election (# indicates a link devoted to one specific election rather than to a set of two to six.)

Although separate boroughs since 1898, the Bronx and Manhattan shared New York County and reported elections together until the separate Bronx County was formed in April 1912 and started her separate existence on January 1, 1914. The borough of Richmond changed its name to Staten Island in 1975, although the co-extensive Richmond County still retains that name.

Although it was not uncommon for a candidate to carry all five boroughs in the same election, variations in voting patterns are noticeable. Since it started reporting separate returns in 1913, the Bronx has supported only one Republican (Fiorello La Guardia) and Manhattan has opposed only two successful candidates (Giuliani in 1993 and Bloomberg in 2001). On the other hand, in the eleven elections since 1965 that were contested between Democratic and Republican candidates (i.e. excluding 1981, when Ed Koch was endorsed by both parties), Queens and Staten Island have voted for only two Democratic candidates, Abe Beame in 1973 and Koch in 1985. The City as a whole elected four of the Democratic candidates in those same eleven elections from 1965 to 2009. The Bronx supported all eleven, Brooklyn nine, and Manhattan six.

1929 to 1973

Some figures and anecdotes courtesy James Trager's New York Chronology (HarperCollins: 2003). Other numbers are from The World Almanac and Book of Facts, then published by The New York World-Telegram (Scripps-Howard), for 1943 (page 412) and 1957 (page 299), and from The Encyclopedia of New York City (see Sources below).

Before 1975, the present Borough of Staten Island was formally known as The Borough of Richmond.

1973

note: All the candidates except Marchi had run in the Democratic primary. Candidates votes on their second ballot lines included above were: Beame-Civil Service & Fusion -67,277; Marchi-Integrity - 14,271; Blumenthal - Good Government - 29, 335; Biaggi - Safe City - 8,010. Other vote includes 8,818 Fran Youngstein - Free Libertarian Party; 3,601 Rasheed Storey - Communist; 2,282 Norman Oliver - Socialist Workers; 2,000 Anton Chaiken -Labor; 1,762 John Emanuel - Socialist Labor

1969

Note: In one of the most unusual primary seasons since the conglomeration of greater New York, the incumbent Mayor (Lindsay) and a former incumbent (Robert F. Wagner, Jr.) both lost their parties' primaries. Procaccino won with less than 33% of the vote against four opponents, which inspired the use of runoffs in future primaries. In the general election, Lindsay carried Manhattan (the only borough he had carried in losing the Republican primary to Marchi, 107,000 to 113,000) as he did in 1965, but he was only 4,000 votes ahead of giving first place in Queens to Procaccino. Turnout dropped to 2.4 million from 2.6 million in 1965. (In the same election, Lindsay's 1965 opponent Abe Beame was easily returned to his old job of comptroller.)

• The Lindsay vote was 872,660 Liberal (36.5%) and 139,973 Independent (5.9%).
• Procaccino's vote was 774,708 Democratic (32.4%) and 57,064 Civil Service Fusion (2.4%).
• The Marchi vote was 329,506 Republican (13.8%) and 212,905 Conservative (8.9%).
• By themselves, the straight Democratic and Republican lines added up to less than 50% of the mayoral vote (1,104,214 or 46.2%), but more than the total vote for Lindsay (1,012,633 or 42.4%).
• Procaccino's general election votes on the Democratic line alone (774,708) were slightly fewer than the total votes received by all candidates in the Democratic primary (777,796).
• Lindsay's general election votes on the Liberal line alone (872,660) exceeded Procaccino's total votes on all lines (831,772).

1965

Almost a quarter of Lindsay's vote (281,796) was on the Liberal Party line, while 63,590 of Beame's votes were on the Civil Service Fusion line. John Lindsay, a Republican Congressman from the "Silk-Stocking" District on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, carried Manhattan, Queens, and traditionally Republican Staten Island (Richmond), while Abe Beame, the city comptroller, carried The Bronx and his home borough of Brooklyn, both of which he had also won in the Democratic primary. However, while Beame had also carried Queens in the primary, he lost it to Lindsay in the general election. (Five years later, Bill Buckley's brother James L. Buckley would win the 1970 New York state election for U.S. Senator on the Conservative Party line against divided opposition.) The Other vote was 11,104- Vito Battista - United Taxpayer Party; 3,977- Clifton DeBerry - Socialist Workers; 2,087 - Eric Haas - Socialist Labor

1961

Mayor Wagner broke with the regular Democratic organization which had supported him in 1953 and 1957, defeating their candidate, Arthur Levitt, in the Democratic primary 61% to 39%. At the same time, after running successfully with Lawrence Gerosa for Comptroller in the previous two elections, Wagner chose to run instead with Abraham Beame in 1961. Gerosa ran against Wagner for mayor as the "real Democrat" on a pro-taxpayer platform. 211,000 of Wagner's 1,237,000 votes came on the Liberal Party line, and 55,000 on the purpose-built Brotherhood line.

Other vote was: Vito Battista - United Taxpayers Party - 19,960; Richard Garza - Socialist Workers - 7,037; Eric Haas - Socialist Labor - 3,272

1957

The Wagner-Christenberry campaign has left us one of the great campaign anecdotes: Christenberry was railing against Wagner's police department for not doing enough to fight corruption and vice, so the cops raided Christenberry's illegal casino in the basement of the hotel he was manager of. Other vote was:

1953

Total vote was 2,207,516 Other vote was David L. Weiss-Socialist Workers-2,054 (0.1%);Nathan Karp-Industrial Government-916; Scattered-180. "Industrial Government" is a ballot title sometimes used, to avoid confusion or to meet election laws, by the Socialist Labor Party. The Liberal Party of New York won over five times as many votes as the American Labor Party in Manhattan, and eight-to-ten times as many in the other boroughs. The ALP lost its ballot status after the 1954 Governor's race, and voted to dissolve itself in 1956.

1950

Vincent Impellitteri, the mayor who succeeded mid-term after William O'Dwyer resigned on August 31, 1950, swept Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island in this special election, while Ferdinand Pecora (aided by the Liberal Party) took very narrow leads in The Bronx and Brooklyn. In this election, the Liberals heavily outpolled the American Labor Party in every borough but Manhattan and Staten Island, where the two parties' votes were almost equal.

1949

Other vote was: Eric Haas - Industrial Government - 7,857; Joseph G. Glass - Socialist - 3,396; Michael Bartell - Socialist Workers - 1,224

1945

O'Dwyer received 867,426 Democratic votes and 257,929 on the American Labor Party line. The Goldstein vote was 301,144 Republican, 122,316 Liberal and 8,141 City Fusion. The No Deal Party (according to Chris McNickle in The Encyclopedia of New York City) was founded by the retiring maverick Republican Mayor Fiorello La Guardia to draw Republican votes towards Newbold Morris and away from the official Republican Party with whom La Guardia was having a dispute. The No Deal Party dissolved soon after the 1945 election. Newbold Morris was a Republican, while Jonah Goldstein was a Democrat until nomination day. Other vote was: Joseph G. Glass - Socialist - 9,304; Farrell Dobbs - Trotskyist Anti-War - 3,656; Eric Hass - Socialist Labor - 3,465; Max Shactman - Workers - 585; Scattered - 45.

1941

As in 1937, more voters in every borough voted on the Democratic line than on any other single line; but this time (unlike 1937) the Democrat carried Queens and Staten Island over La Guardia, shrinking the Mayor's overall citywide percentage lead from 20% to 6%. As in 1937, La Guardia's overall margin of victory depended on the American Labor Party, which again won more votes than the Republicans in The Bronx. While the total vote and Republican vote were almost identical in 1937 and 1941, the ALP line lost 47,000 votes (2.4%), almost entirely from Manhattan (-18,000) and Brooklyn (-26,000), as the vote on La Guardia's other lines (Fusion, Progressive and United City) dropped from 187,000 (8.3%) to 86,000 (3.7%). The Democratic Party gained about 160,000 votes lost by La Guardia (and about 7½% of the total). In both Queens and Richmond (Staten Island), the swing was even greater: La Guardia lost over 15% of the total vote (and the Democrats gained over 15%) from 1937, as his lead there flipped from roughly 56%-44% to 39%-60%.

1937

Note that the leading line in every borough, and in the City as a whole, is the Democratic line for Judge Mahoney. Running on the Republican line alone (as he did when losing the election of 1929), Mayor La Guardia would have lost every borough, but he carried all five when the American Labor Party line was added. The ALP line did better than the Republican line in The Bronx, although worse than the Democratic one. There were also 2,307 votes for Emil Teichert on the Industrial Government line.

1933

While opposed by Tammany Hall, McKee enjoyed the support of Democratic President (and former Governor) Franklin D. Roosevelt, who declared neutrality when his ally Mayor La Guardia was running for reelection in #1937. (See Ed Flynn's comments about FDR's 1936 contribution to starting the American Labor Party in the #References below.) According to Michael Tomasky, La Guardia, who had lost the #1921 Republican Mayoral primary to Manhattan Borough President Henry Curran, did not enjoy the support of a united Republican Party when he won the party's nomination and lost the general election in #1929, but was able to win over Republican organizational support in 1933. The 1933 LaGuardia vote was 446,833 Republican and 421,689 City Fusion. There were also 1,778 votes for Henry Klein-Five Cent Fare & Taxpayers; 472 for Aaron Orange - Socialist Labor; and 118 for Adolph Silver - Independent Union.

Collapse of the Socialist Party vote

In 1933, a year that might otherwise have favored the Socialist Party's chances, the New Deal began, Morris Hillquit died, Norman Thomas refused to run again for mayor, and the Socialist vote (previously as high as one-eighth to one-fifth of the total) collapsed irretrievably from a quarter of a million to sixty thousand (one-thirtieth of the total). Many supporters of Thomas's 1929 campaign defected (some, like Paul Blanshard, also leaving the Party) to support Fiorello La Guardia. By the time of the next mayoral election in 1937, which the Socialist Party decided by internal referendum not to contest, many reformers and trade-unionists who wanted to support major-party progressives like La Guardia (R-ALP-Fusion), Gov. Herbert Lehman (D-ALP) and Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt (D-ALP) from outside the two-party structure backed the American Labor Party (ALP), the Social Democratic Federation and later the Liberal Party of New York. After a disastrous gubernatorial campaign in 1938 (where Thomas and George Hartmann won only 25,000 votes out of over 4.7 million), the Socialist Party lost its separate line on the New York ballot, allowed its members to join the ALP, and indeed encouraged them to do so. In 1939, the Socialist Harry W. Laidler, a co-founder of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society and League for Industrial Democracy, was elected (with the help of proportional representation) to the New York City Council on the ALP's ticket, but lost its renomination two years later because of rivalry with the Communists.

• [Although not apparent from the table below, the Communist Party's vote for other municipal offices, such as City Council and President of the Board of Aldermen, was increasing at the same time that the Socialist Party's was declining below the Communists'. But in 1936, when the foundation of the ALP coincided with world Communism's shift from independent action towards the Popular Front, New York City Communists redirected much of their own energy towards supporting the ALP.]

[Click on the year for fuller details. ALP = American Labor Party (see commentary above). Socialist Labor Party candidates and votes not retrievable for every year from the sources used for this article. Readers are encouraged to supply any missing details.]

† In 1894 and in 1897, Lucien Sanial was the mayoral candidate of the Socialist Labor Party before both the SLP and the Social Democratic Party each split in two. In 1901, one faction of the SLP, led by Morris Hillquit, and one faction of the SDP, led by Eugene V. Debs, united to form the Socialist Party of America, which soon drew away many votes formerly cast for the SLP. For further details, see Hillquit's History of Socialism in the United States (1910) and Howard Quint's Forging of American Socialism (1964), both cited in the #References at the end of this article.

1932

Totals after a court-ordered recount:

Joseph V. McKee, as the (popularly elected) President of the Board of Aldermen, became Acting Mayor upon the resignation of elected Mayor Jimmy Walker on September 1, 1932. McKee's write-in total is, in fact, the highest any New York City election would ever see. For the election after the next one, voting machines which would make write-in voting much more difficult were introduced. Machines of this basic design are still being used.

Lewis Humphrey Pounds was President of the Borough of Brooklyn from June 1913 to December 1917.

This was the last of many campaigns for different offices by Morris Hillquit, a co-founder of the Socialist Party of America, who died in 1933. Hillquit had won over 21% of the vote for mayor in 1917.

• Borough returns before the recount (which did not significantly affect the outcome):

|} There were also 24,014 votes 1.2% for William Patterson - Communist and 11,379 0.5% for Olive Johnson - Socialist Labor

1929

There were also 5,805 votes for William Weinstone - Communist and 320 votes for Lawrence Tracy - Commonwealth Land. The great stock market crash hit Wall Street on October 24–29, 1929, less than two weeks before Election Day. Richard Edward Enright was New York City Police Commissioner from 1918 to 1925.

1897 to 1925

¶ Basic numbers for the elections of 1897 to 1925 come from The World Almanac and Book of Facts for 1929 and 1943. Percentages and borough totals calculated independently. (Because of some anomalies, not all columns and rows add precisely.) First names and informational links gathered from Wikipedia and several external sources, including the free public archive of The New York Times.

1925

Mayor Hylan, an ally of the newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst, was unseated in a venomous Democratic primary by "Gentleman" Jimmy Walker, the Democratic party leader in the New York State Senate, who had been recruited to oppose Hylan by Hearst's inveterate enemy, Democratic Governor Al Smith. After the death of Tammany Hall leader Charles F. Murphy in 1924, the regular Democratic organizations also split their allegiances, with Hylan receiving support from John McCooey, the leader in Brooklyn, and Walker from Ed Flynn of the Bronx. (Hearst had run for mayor on third-party tickets in 1909 and 1913, while Al Smith had lost a bid for the Democratic nomination for mayor in 1917, instead winning the presidency of the New York City Council as Hylan's running-mate.)

1921

Henry Curran was the borough president of Manhattan and heavily defeated Fiorello H. La Guardia, president of the board of aldermen, in the Republican primary election for mayor.

1917

Notes: The Single Tax on land values was the proposal and platform of Henry George, who ran for mayor in 1897 and 1886. D. Leigh Colvin later contested the U.S. presidential election of 1936 for the Prohibition Party.

The Fall 1917 election would have been exciting even had it occurred in peacetime. In September, the City held its first-ever primary elections for mayor. The sitting independent Democratic Mayor, John P. Mitchel, who had enjoyed Republican support under Fusion in 1913, narrowly lost the Republican primary to William Bennett, after mistakes and frauds led to a series of recounts. When negotiations between the parties failed, Mitchel ran alone as a Fusion candidate against Bennett, the Socialist Morris Hillquit and John F. Hylan, the regular Democrat supported by Tammany Hall and William Randolph Hearst.

However, the elections happened after the United States had declared war on April 6. Hillquit and the Socialist Party quickly and vigorously opposed the war, which Mitchel vigorously supported. Hillquit's anti-war position helped the Socialists win their highest-ever vote for mayor, but also led to vitriolic denunciations by many, including The New York Times and former President Theodore Roosevelt. Mitchel and Hillquit each won less than quarter of the vote, while Hylan, who had been non-committal about the war, won the election with less than half the vote. However, as in 1897, the numbers suggest that Tammany Hall might have won even against a unified opposition.

1897 to 1913

¶ The Bronx and Manhattan, although separate Boroughs since 1898, shared New York County and reported their votes together until Bronx County was formed in April 1912 and came into its separate existence on January 1, 1914.

[ The World Almanac does not list separate returns for the two boroughs until 1917, but The Encyclopedia of New York City (see Sources) gives these major candidates' results for 1913:

• Manhattan: McCall 103,429 - Mitchel 131,280, and The Bronx: McCall 25,684 - Mitchel 46,944. ]

Mayor William Jay Gaynor, who had survived being shot in the throat by a disappointed office-seeker in 1910, died at sea from the indirect effects of his injury on September 10, 1913. He was succeeded for the rest of 1913 by Ardolph Loges Kline, the acting president of the board of aldermen.

The election of 1897 was held just before the Five Boroughs formally consolidated into Greater New York in 1898, so it was the present city's first mayoral election. For preliminary results for all the municipal offices, broken down into smaller districts, see "Democrats Take All - The Tammany Ticket Makes Almost a Clean Sweep of the Greater City - Only Two Republicans in the Council..." in The New-York Times, November 4, 1897 (seen April 11, 2008).

† Henry George, author of Progress and Poverty and proponent of the Single Tax on land, died (probably from the strain of campaign speeches) on October 29, four days before Election Day; his son was nominated to take his place representing "The Democracy of Thomas Jefferson". [In 1886, George had been the United Labor Party's candidate for Mayor of the smaller City of New York, now the Borough of Manhattan, winning 68,110 votes to 90,552 for the Democrat Abram Hewitt and 60,435 for the Republican Theodore Roosevelt, although George's supporters maintained that he had lost the election through fraud.]

For Lucien Sanial, see the table notes under [[ It appears from the percentages to be an open question whether the Republican Party's decision in 1897 not to support Seth Low's Fusion campaign caused his defeat by splitting the vote against Tammany Hall. Republicans withdrew in Low's favor in 1901 (when he won) and in 1903 (when he lost).