More than 1 million NYC voters have cast ballots so far on Election Day
NEW YORK — Nearly 2.2 million New York City voters have already cast their ballots in this year’s presidential race as of 6 p.m. Tuesday, according to the city’s Board of Elections.
More than 1 million New Yorkers went to the polls on Tuesday alone, while nearly 1.1 million took advantage of early voting from Oct. 26 through Nov. 3 — the highest number of early voters ever recorded, the BOE said.
Another 200,000 mail-in ballots from across the five boroughs will be counted in the Election Day tally. The polls close at 9 p.m. Tuesday.
More than 3 million New Yorkers cast their ballots in the 2020 presidential election, while around 2.7 million did so in 2016. There are more than 5 million registered voters in the city.
The day started with a steady stream of voters at polling stations across the city, including in Brooklyn, where Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, New York’s top Democrat on Capitol Hill, said he’s confident Vice President Kamala Harris will be elected president.
“She’s the candidate talking about helping average folks, with lowering their costs, with getting better housing, with making sure the tax system is fair,” Schumer told reporters after casting his vote at Public School 321 in Park Slope. “Donald Trump spends all his time criticizing other people, talking about who his enemies are, saying he’s not going to trust the results of the election. It’s an obvious choice for the American people: One person who cares about the American people, the other who’s consumed with his own ego.”
Schumer, whose party leads the Senate with a razor-thin 51-49 majority, said he’s also “cautiously optimistic” he’ll retain the majority in the upper chamber, and that the House will flip into Democratic hands as well.
“A year and a half ago, everyone said we had no chance of winning the Senate. Now we’re right in the hunt,” he said.
There are six battleground House seats in New York that Democrats are hoping to win. None of them are in the city, and five of them are currently represented by Republicans.
Some polling sites in Queens experienced glitches Tuesday morning, with machines at several locations rejecting ballots. BOE officials reassured voters that all votes cast would be counted, and the technicians were fixing the issue and inspected other polling places across the borough as a precautionary measure.