New York City is in the midst of holding a sort of hybrid election to choose its new mayor. The Democratic primary used "ranked-choice voting" (R.C.V.), while the general election tomorrow will be the traditional "whichever candidate gets the most votes wins" sort of contest. I saw an article today in Salon which contrasted how these two contests played out, which pointed out how the Democratic primary was a less-vicious affair, with candidates not only vying to be the first selection on people's ballots but also the "number two" choice for voters backing other candidates. It posited that the general election would have been a much more civil affair if R.C.V. had been in place, since the same sort of effect might have changed the way the candidates campaigned. The article was probably right to some degree or another, but it missed a rather large point -- one that might be pertinent for Republican voters: if the N.Y.C. mayoral general election had indeed been held under R.C.V. rules, then frontrunner Zohran Mamdani might have wound up losing.

The election is not over yet (obviously) so it's premature to anoint Mamdani the winner, but the polling has been pretty clear in the final days of the campaign. Mamdani is almost certain to beat both Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa by large margins -- although (crucially) the question of whether Mamdani will actually garner a simple majority (over 50 percent of the votes cast) or not is still an open one. He will likely get close, but he may not make it over that hurdle.

Of course, it won't matter. If he gets the most votes of any of the candidates, it doesn't matter whether he gets 45 percent or 49 percent or 51 percent of them -- he will still wind up being mayor. But if he doesn't cross the 50-percent mark, then the reality will be that more people voted against him than voted for him -- which means that if R.C.V. had been in place, he might well have lost the race.

Ranked-choice voting, for those still unfamiliar with the concept, means you get to mark your ballot not just for one candidate, but for multiple candidates. Unless there are only two candidates running, you get to mark your second (and third, and fourth, etc.) choices down as well. If there are only two candidates running, then this obviously isn't possible, and one or the other of them will wind up with a majority of votes. But let's say there are four candidates in the race. Then you, as a voter, get to mark your choice of three candidates, as your first, second, and third choices. If no one candidate wins over 50 percent in the initial round of counting the ballots, then a second count will happen (R.C.V. is also known as "instant runoff" for this reason -- an entire second election between the top two finishers is not necessary, since everyone's already cast their ballots in advance for such a possibility). In this second count, the candidate with the least amount of votes in the first round is dropped. All the ballots from everyone who voted for them as their first choice in the first round are then counted again, and their second choice is used instead. If there is still no candidate with an outright majority, then the process is repeated until there is one clear winner (which will eventually happen, even if they have to go to the final round where only two candidates remain).

The whole point of R.C.V. is to allow people to vote for any candidate -- even one polling very badly -- without having to worry about "throwing their vote away." Voters can feel free to vote for some minor candidate secure in the knowledge that if their candidate doesn't win, their second (and third, etc.) choices will still count.

The other goal of R.C.V. -- as that Salon article points out -- is that the candidates themselves run very different campaigns. Instead of trashing all their opponents, they can band together and make a pitch to voters who prefer someone else in the initial round. As it points out:

Think back to the final days of that campaign. Not much in American politics feels uplifting, but this was that rare moment that seemed to exemplify what our elections could be. [Zohran] Mamdani and Brad Lander appeared together on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and bicycled to joint events in all corners of the city. Candidates cross-endorsed each other; they even fundraised for one another.

Ranked choice voting made that happen.... Perhaps most importantly, it ends any talk of spoilers, and encourages candidates to make a positive pitch to voters, seeking second place votes, rather than closing with extreme negativity.

The primary ended with togetherness and produced a majority winner in Mamdani.

The article goes on to contrast this with the general election, which will not feature R.C.V., and which was a much more brutal campaign all around.

There were initially four candidates with at least some sort of shot of winning. There was Zohran Mamdani as the Democratic nominee and Curtis Sliwa as the Republican. There was also the sitting mayor, Eric Adams, who skipped the Democratic primary altogether (since he knew he didn't stand much of a chance of winning it after his administration has been so mired in corruption) and ran on a third-party line. Then there was Andrew Cuomo, who (embarrassingly) lost the Democratic primary to Mamdani and decided to also run as an independent candidate. During the campaign it became obvious that Adams didn't stand a chance, so he dropped out (to give Cuomo a better shot at defeating Mamdani). Sliwa was heavily pressured (from all sides) to also drop out for the same reason -- to clear the field for Cuomo -- but he refused to do so.

If the race had been run under R.C.V. rules, then Adams wouldn't have needed to drop out at all. Instead, Cuomo would have campaigned as hard as he could -- perhaps even appearing at rallies with Adams (who has since endorsed Cuomo) in order to woo his voters to mark Cuomo down as their second choice. The same dynamic might also have been in play with Sliwa and his voters. Of course, Mamdani would also have been free to try to convince the voters of all the other candidates to mark him down as their second choice as well.

Nobody knows how this would have played out, and nobody will know even after the votes are tallied tomorrow night. But if Mamdani wins with (for instance) only 47 percent of the vote, then that means Cuomo might have beaten him in the final round of counting the votes. To do so, however, would mean that Cuomo would have had to pick up almost all of Sliwa's voters (as a second choice), and it's impossible to know how many Sliwa voters might be totally disgusted with Cuomo -- in which case, they might have just refused to mark down a second choice or actually picked Mamdani instead. But mathematically, at least, the possibility of a Cuomo come-from-behind victory would have been there.

Without R.C.V., it isn't.

Up until now, R.C.V. has mostly been a favorite of progressives and Democrats and those deeply interested in voting reform as a political issue. Republicans haven't gotten on board with the scheme at all. But maybe seeing Democrats win races with less than 50 percent of the vote might begin to change their minds? It's certainly a possibility. The New York City mayor's race might even convince a few of them to give R.C.V. a chance, at the very least. Or maybe not -- Andrew Cuomo isn't a Republican, after all. But even Donald Trump would have preferred him to Mamdani, so who knows? Stranger things have happened.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant