IslamoLeftists love him. Traditional Democrats fear him. Republicans, liberals, and the middle class are packing their suitcases. He’s more handsome than Tom Cruise. Zohran Mamdani looks poised to become New York’s next mayor, and he apparently wants to turn the city into the Uganda his father left. Could the same outcome occur in Montgomery County with ranked-choice voting (RCV) voting?
I doubt it. Let’s get into the analysis.
New York City adopted RCV in 2019 for its primary and general elections. Mamdani won the RCV balloting for the 2025 Democratic primary, but it wasn’t RCV that elected him. Looking at the results of the balloting, Mamdani won the plurality with 43% of the vote, edging out Andrew Cuomo who received 37%. For those who still believe plurality wins are legitimate, Mamdani is the victor; he didn’t need RCV to win.
RCV’s automatic runoff mechanism could have pushed second-place Cuomo over the 50% threshold for a majority win. The opposite was true: voters for last-place candidates preferred Mamdani as their second or third-place candidate, cementing his majority win. Clearly, Mamdani embodies the aspirations of most New York Democrats.
This outcome is yet another example of long-term incumbents’ losing RCV elections. New York’s traditional Democrats ran Cuomo with a Bill Clinton endorsement. To New York’s younger voters, that combination is about as relevant as a “Metamucil latte” (as described by one of my YouTube channels). Traditional Democrats could have clinched the RCV balloting (even if Mamdani won the first round) had they run a campaign that appealed to a wide set of voters—but they didn’t. The same outcome happened with Alaska’s congressional seat, which was a Republican plurality birthright until that state adopted RCV.
I’ve been promoting RCV to provide more convincing wins in our local Democratic primaries. Evan Glass supports RCV, and there is movement in Annapolis to allow or mandate RCV in various statewide and local elections. Could this reform push the most oppressive of MoCo progressives to ever more power?
Eight out of 11 current County Council members and the county executive won their primaries with plurality votes, meaning a majority of Democrats do not want any of them as their representative. None of those nine would necessarily survive a runoff. For example, voters may rank Gabe Albornoz for their first choice and a local Mamdani as their second choice. Enough voters making a local Mamdani a first or second choice would give that candidate a win. Adding an endorsement from the teachers’ union (which has its own struggles with coercion, resource extraction, and red-lining), and we are on our way to the progressive utopia.
It won’t happen.
For those MoCo Democrats who are promoting RCV, beware, because you may get what you wish for. If you want to keep your jobs, you’ll need to run RCV campaigns broader than what you normally do, and that means appealing to moderates, independents, Republicans, or the IslamoLeft. After Mahmoud v. Taylor and the progressives’ preceding insults, coercion, and corruption, my sense is that you have completely forfeited any widespread support from the Moslem community for at least a generation. Council Members Jawando, Glass, and Stewart (and possibly others) are on record denouncing the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of a basic civil right; to now ask for the Moslems’ support as a second or third choice on an RCV ballot would be a sign of acute cognitive dissonance. Similarly, any candidate who supports Mahmoud v. Taylor won’t get a single vote from our many orthodox progressives. That calculus makes it difficult for a local Mamdani to win a primary election.
Until RCV comes into play, MoCo’s Democrats have nothing to fear. They will be secure in their plurality wins, and everything will be business as usual.
