New Yorkers are set to pick a new mayor today after an unpredictable race that has drawn attention from far beyond the largest city in the US, with President Donald Trump branding frontrunner Zohran Mamdani "a communist".
New York City's mayoral race is always watched closely as the city is the nation's financial capital and its leaders' decisions often influence national political discourse, at least for the locally dominant Democratic Party.
Breakout Democratic Party candidate Mamdani, a naturalised Muslim American who represents Queens in the state legislature, leads former governor and sex assault-accused Andrew Cuomo, running as an independent after losing his party's primary contest to Mamdani.
The Republican party candidate polling in third place is Curtis Sliwa, 71, who has a colourful past as founder of the Guardian Angels vigilante group, a prolific broadcaster and cat lover.
The latest Quinnipiac University poll conducted October 23 to 27 gives Mamdani 43 percent of the vote, followed by Cuomo on 33 percent and Sliwa on 14 percent.
The race has centred on cost of living, crime, and how each candidate would handle Trump, who has threatened to withhold federal funds from the city.
"Mamdani is an unusual political figure and really captures the spirit of the moment. This is a moment where a loud anti-Trump voice in America's biggest city is going to get news," Lincoln Mitchell, a politics professor at Columbia University, told AFP.
"Frankly, a Muslim candidate for mayor of New York is an enormous story."
Mamdani, 34, has attacked his opponents for Islamophobic rhetoric and smears, calling out both Republicans and Democrats for "anti-Muslim sentiment that has grown so endemic in our city".
NYC Board of Elections data showed 275,006 registered Democrats had cast ballots, as had 46,115 Republicans, along with 42,383 voters unaffiliated with any party in the first five days of early voting, which ends November 2.
Mamdani's ascent has highlighted the gulf between the left and centre-right of the Democratic Party.
New York's state governor Kathy Hochul, a centrist, appeared at a Mamdani rally on October 26 but was drowned out by "tax the rich" chants, an AFP correspondent saw.
Hochul has been critical of Mamdani's proposals to impose a two-percent income tax on New Yorkers making more than $1 million.
Mamdani's unlikely ascent has been fired by young New Yorkers canvassing for him, with his campaign claiming 90,000 people have volunteered.
Ahead of the vote, Sliwa appeared in a surreal conservative rap video wearing a suit and his signature red beret.
Cuomo, 67, sought Thursday to court Black and Muslim voters, campaigning in Harlem with current mayor Eric Adams, a corruption-accused Democrat who bowed out, eventually endorsing his former foe Cuomo.
