Zohran Mamdani’s success in New York’s mayoral Primary on Tuesday has many conservatives talking about the burgeoning threat of socialism in American politics.

But as one conservative commentator observed, too few are talking about the troubling voting mechanism that helped secure Mamdani his victory.

“New York loving Muslims and Commies and Commie Muslims isn’t how you wound up with Zohran Mamdani. Ranked Choice Voting is,” the conservative YouTuber known as RazörFist wrote on the social media platform X.

“The reason few on X are emphasizing this fact is because many Right-wing pundits, particularly of the Lolbert persuasion, support the Ranked Choice scam,” he wrote.

New York loving Muslims and Commies and Commie Muslims isn’t how you wound up with Zohran Mamdani.

Ranked Choice Voting is.

The reason few on X are emphasizing this fact is because many Right-wing pundits, particularly of the Lolbert persuasion, support the Ranked Choice scam.

— RazörFist (@RAZ0RFIST) July 2, 2025

In most U.S. elections, voters will choose just one candidate for each position on their ballot.

But that’s not the case for New York City.

“The city’s ranked choice system allows voters to choose up to five candidates in order of preference. And Mamdani was the clear beneficiary: He secured nearly double the number of ranked choice votes compared to Cuomo,” writers Jeff Coltin and Joe Anuta wrote in Politico.

In order to win in a ranked choice system, a candidate must win more than 50 percent of the votes. If in the first round of voting a candidate achieves this, he wins. If not, then the candidate with the least number of votes is eliminated, and his votes are given to voters’ second choice on the ballot, and so on. This repeats until a candidate wins more than half of the votes.

FairVote, an election reform organization in favor of ranked choice voting, explains the system in the short tutorial below.

A spike in young voters, ages 25 to 34, certainly played a role in Mamdani’s election, as they accounted for more than 21 percent of the total vote count, according to the Gothamist.

But ranked choice voting undoubtedly played its part as well: Mamdani collected 99,069 votes from eliminated candidates, while Cuomo picked up just 53,493 votes, according to the Gothamist.

Mamdani’s campaign also urged voters to not vote for Cuomo as one of their five choices.

As RazörFist had mentioned, some conservatives actually favor the system. Others, however, have stopped singing its praises.

“One of the central arguments in favor of ranked choice is that, because people can express their true preferences, it is more likely to produce more moderate candidates. However, in practice, it rarely accomplishes this goal,” wrote conservative analyst Dace Potas in a USA Today opinion column. 

Potas, who used to favor ranked choice voting, cited a 2023 academic study explaining why the system fails to yield moderate candidates.

“As an electorate grows more polarized, candidates located at the median are less likely to be elected under [ranked choice voting], because they simply are not the first choice of enough voters,” the study read.

This puts voters in a dangerous situation.

“In our polarized political environment, ranked choice voting may make matters even worse by favoring more extreme candidates, thus widening the partisan divide in races,” Potas wrote.

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