Eric Adams leads in New York mayor’s race; challengers plead for patience as votes are ranked Reis Thebault The buildup to New York’s mayoral primary was dramatic: It was a pandemic-pocked campaign with plenty of late-stage mudslinging, a surprising alliance and a large turnout. Now, the city must wait. With nearly 800,000 Democratic votes counted by midday Wednesday, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams maintained a comfortable lead in the city’s inaugural ranked-choice election, with nearly 32 percent of first-choice votes for the nomination. But the race is not over — far from it, say Adams’s closest competitors. Tens of thousands of absentee ballots must still be counted — and the combination of those and the new electoral system means that final results will not be available for weeks. Experts say it is difficult to extrapolate whether the early positioning will hold over the remainder of the count, with voters’ choices still unknown.