They’re tired of Mayor Eric Adams. They’re warming up to Andrew M. Cuomo. They know little of the 10 other major candidates vying to be New York City’s next mayor.

And ranked-choice voting has only furthered their confusion.

This year’s mayoral race, once thought to be a rubber-stamp re-election of a Democratic incumbent, has become a convoluted, unruly affair. Many New Yorkers across ages, races and boroughs lack a clear sense of the city’s political direction and how they might vote to change it — a sentiment underlined by the roughly 15 percent of voters in recent surveys who said they were undecided, and in interviews with nearly two dozen voters.

Paul Ramirez, a Bronx native and a member of the borough’s Community Board 6, is baffled by the ranked-choice ballot process, which allows voters to select up to five candidates in their order of preference. The system, which debuted in the 2021 mayoral primary, helped Mr. Adams win the Democratic ballot line that year.

“I’m actively engaged and I like to consider myself a civic-minded nerd, right?” said Mr. Ramirez, a co-owner of the Bronx Beer Hall and a registered Democrat. “If I’m that way and I’m not as familiar, then I would imagine that a lot of New Yorkers aren’t.”

Leslie Foster, a retiree from the Bronx and a lifelong Democrat, also said she would need more information.