Steve Kornacki: Breaking down the state of New York's mayoral race on primary day

The final public poll suggests the potential for an upset in Tuesday’s New York Democratic mayoral primary — an outcome that would be dramatic but that also might end up resolving nothing.

The final public poll suggests the potential for an upset in Tuesday’s New York Democratic mayoral primary — an outcome that would be dramatic but that also might end up resolving nothing.

The Emerson College/WPIX/The Hill survey shows former Gov. Andrew Cuomo leading state Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani 36% to 34% in the initial first-choice count, with Mamdani eventually overtaking Cuomo after multiple rounds of ranked choice tabulation and winning the final tally 52% to 48%.

But a few caveats are in order.

First, public polls in the campaign have been sparse. Only Emerson and Marist University have been regularly conducting them. And Marist’s final poll found a different result, with Cuomo up by double digits at both the start and the end of ranked choice tabulation. (More on the details of that survey below.)

One of those polls may be a lot more accurate than the other, although there is room for both to be right, since Marist’s was taken a week earlier, and the race could have shifted in that time.