Andrew Yang drops out of New York mayoral race as Eric Adams leads

Andrew Yang, who led the polls in the New York mayoral election in the early months of the race, conceded defeat on Tuesday night, after results from the first vote count showed him slumping and former police officer Eric Adams in the lead.

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The concession capped a disappointing performance for Yang, a former tech entrepreneur and long-shot presidential candidate, with early tallies showing him in fourth place for the race to lead the largest city in the US.

While Adams led on Tuesday, however, he is a long way from being confirmed as the Democratic candidate for mayor – a nomination almost certain to guarantee a win in the election proper this November in the overwhelmingly Democratic-voting city.

Tens of thousands of mail-in ballots are yet to be counted, and with ranked choice voting being used in a New York mayoral election for the first time, counting will continue for weeks, and it could be 12 July before the victor is declared.

On Wednesday morning Adams was at 31.7% with 84% of early and on-the-day votes counted, with Maya Wiley, a progressive civil rights lawyer, trailing on 22.3%. Kathryn Garcia, a former New York sanitation commissioner, was third with 19.5% of the vote.

“I am not going to be the mayor of New York City based upon the numbers that have come in tonight,” Yang said in a speech on Tuesday night.

By Wednesday he had 11.7% of the vote.

“I am conceding this race. Though we’re not sure who’s the next mayor is going to be, but whoever that person is, I will be very happy to work with them to improve the lives of the 8.3 million people who live in our great city, and I encourage everyone here to do the same.”

Under the ranked-choice system, a candidate must receive 50% of the vote to win the primary, which gives hope to Wiley and Garcia for the coming weeks. Voters’ second-, third-, fourth- and fifth-choice candidates will be added to the totals in the coming weeks until a winner emerges.

“This is going to be about not only the ones. But also about the twos and threes – and to be honest, we’re not going to know more tonight than we know now,” Garcia said on Tuesday night.

Speaking to supporters, Adams acknowledged the fragility of his early lead but also struck a victorious tone.

“We know that there’s going to be twos and threes and fours,” Adams said.

“But there’s something else we know. We know that New York City said: ‘Our first choice is Eric Adams.’”