More Primary Voters For Comptroller, Advocate Than Mayor

Yesterday's primary election had the lowest turnout in history. Overall, less than 400,000 registered voters headed to the polls. According to the AP, the mayoral matchup between Democrats City Comptroller William Thompson and City Councilman Tony Avella was really low: "About 10 percent of New York City's 3.1 million registered Democrats came out to vote in the contest, where just two candidates were competing."

In fact, a PolitickerNY reader wonders about the "reverse drop-off" between the unofficial voting results for the mayoral primary, vs. the ones for comptroller and Public Advocate. Over 354,000 people voted in the City Comptroller race and over 347,000 in the Public Advocate race.

Thompson was asked today, "Are you disheartened by the fact that people came out to vote for public advocate and comptroller and sat out mayor's race?" and responded, "Not in the least. There's always something that you can find. I got over 70 percent yesterday in the primary," and added that other races were "hot"—"I think that many people looked at the race for mayor, at least in the primary, as kind of a foregone conclusion and I think that's why it didn't generate as much interest as it could've. But that was the primary. We're talking about the November election and the direction this city's going to go in."