NYC Mayor: Is Yang Inevitable?

On A Mayor's Race Refusing To Move

Monday night, Emerson released a poll of the Democratic Primary for the mayoralty of New York City, and the question of how inevitable Andrew Yang may or may not be is coming up again. I've been a sceptic of Yang's this entire time, both as a candidate and as a theoretical office holder, but scepticism that doesn't adjust to the new reality becomes dogma.

I've said before that he is the singularly most likely person to be Mayor, but he is not a prohibitive favourite - that I'd take the field over him. I'm not sure that's true anymore, because the rest of the field has had two months to try and catch fire and nobody really has. I'm not sure Yang is much above 50% to win, but I think I would take him as more likely than the field to win. I think.

This is, of course, ludicrous - Yang is a fundamentally unserious person who doesn't understand shit from a hole in the ground. He is incompetent, idiotic, and a candidate who was fun as a debate stage foil. As a theoretical executive, no way in hell should he be anywhere near the levers of power. His recent argument that the minimum wage shouldn't go up - that his basic income should, in effect, be a wage subsidy for poverty wages for working class folk - is dangerously stupid. You can think UBI is good, but to say that UBI could or should be used instead of a minimum wage increase is insanity. That said, I don't have a vote, and apparently New Yorkers want this nonsense. Or do they?

The prevailing narrative - that Yang is clearly favoured - comes from a series of polls of dubious repute, namely a pair of Yang internals and the recently released Emerson. As far as the polls go, Yang is a (I even dare say substantial) favourite - but, in a plot twist that nobody should be surprised by, I've got a few reasons to doubt the polls.

US Polls Are Trash

If US pollsters cannot accurately assess a proper electorate for a general election nationally, then how are we expecting them to properly assess what a New York City primary is going to look like? The polling failures in 2020 were a combination of both missing levels of voter support amongst demographic groups, and then fucking up the weighting on top of it. In specific, Emerson are home of the "David Perdue at 20% of the Black vote" special from Georgia, so their ability to poll a majority non-white city should be heavily debated.

Yang Is The Biggest Name In The Race

It's a pretty weird state of affairs that this open Mayoral race is mostly devoid of interesting names. You've got Yang, who is famous for getting basically no support in the 2020 Presidential primary, the City Comptroller, and then a bunch of people I've never heard of. And, while that's not a perfect judge of name ID, it's pretty clear that Yang is the only person with nearly-universal name ID in the race, which in a time before in person campaigning kicks off in earnest, could be artificially inflating Yang's polling numbers.

Yang Hasn't Faced An Onslaught Of Scrutiny - Yet

Between Joe Biden, Covid Relief, and Andrew Cuomo, Yang has been skating on his name without being made to really explain his ideas (or lack of them) coherently or cogently. They plainly don't add up, and when the press focuses on this race in time, he will have to have better answers than the platitudinous nonsense that he has skated by thus far on.

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I'm not sure how much of that I actually believe - after all, I think he's more likely to be the next Mayor of New York than not - but his campaign faces some real hurdles to get through in the next few months. He's not a lock, and his lead is not as secure as the size of polling lead suggests.

The one thing that we can dispel is the idea that Ranked Choice Voting will end his run. Plainly, it won't. If Yang is up by double digits on primary day, he will not get run down from second, for two reasons. One, this race isn't polarized on a Yang or not-Yang axis, and secondly, the cause of victories from second in preferential voting systems is almost entirely because the Australian Greens actively promote - in messaging and in their campaign literature - putting the right last in a system where (outside of New South Wales) you have to number every square. In an optional preferential system like New York, and without explicit pacts months out from the election, Ranked Choice Voting won't stop Yang.

Andrew Yang is probably going to be the next Mayor of New York, and unless Scott Stringer can find a better campaign theme and message real quick, Yang will waltz into the Mayor's office.