Race for NYC mayoral candidacy hits the home stretch with 5 days until primary

NEW YORK - Fresh off the final debate of the Democratic primary, the candidates were back on the campaign trail today.

"This is an amazing moment for New York," Brooklyn borough president Eric Adams declared at an event in Harlem where he was endorsed by former governor David Patterson.

In the Bronx, Andrew Yang gave more details about his plan to give every New Yorker $2000 cash.

"This campaign is a chance to deliver fundamental change to New York City," he said.

Kathryn Garcia, The former city sanitation commissioner, held an event to talk about subway safety, saying: "I'm prioritizing problem-solving over political feuding,"

The other five leading Democratic candidates also fanned out across the city trying to court any and all undecided voters.

But some, like Robbie and Tommy Burns, say after the last debate, they felt like they finally had heard enough.

"I watched the debate last night, yes," said Robbie.  "I think it did it change [my choices] very slightly."

Get breaking news alerts in the free FOX5NY News app!

She and her husband were among the several hundred who turned out for day 6 of early voting at their Upper East side polling site at Marymount Manhattan College.

As of Thursday morning, just about 84,000 New Yorkers had voted early. That’s out of a total of more than 3.7 million registered Democrats and about 566,000 registered Republicans.

One voter who ranked Garcia as her top choice, had this theory about the low turnout: "Because nobody understands what this whole thing is with ranked voting, and people sort of wait until the last minute if they can."

This is the first citywide race in which ranked voting has been on the ballot and most voters that spoke to FOX 5 NY said they liked the new system.

"I liked it for Mayor because I think there were a lot of really good candidates," said one voter.

It’s also the first time the city has had early voting for a mayoral primary. Jack Dilemoni, Democratic strategist, says in general, primary turnout in a non-presidential election is low, but the numbers that’s far lower than what many predicted.

"Despite a lot of coverage of the mayoral race and a lot of characters and interesting stories and big names, some folks don’t seem to be that excited about it," he said.

Sign up for FOX 5 email newsletters

And he says with just five days to go until the race is over, a lot of people still have not made up their minds.

"You have anywhere from 15-20 percent of the voters still undecided about the mayors race," Dilemoni said.

Early voting continues through Sunday evening.