NYC Election Day turnout is abysmally low as primary races limp to finish line

Voter turnout for Tuesday’s second round of primary elections in New York City was looking very low, according to the city’s Board of Elections.

Preliminary figures show just 184,000 voters had cast ballots by 3 p.m. across all five boroughs, the BOE announced in an update on Twitter.

Live Results: New York Primary Election, August 2022

Manhattan led the way with 81,178 votes cast as candidates battled in two hard-fought congressional primaries in the NY-10 and NY-12 districts.

The raw totals include early in-person votes but not absentees. There are 2.3 million registered voters in the city.

People vote during Primary Election Day at P.S. 10 on Aug. 23, 2022, in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn. Residents of NYC are voting in the second primary of the year due to the congressional redistricting process pushing back the congressional and State Senate primaries. (Michael M. Santiago/)

They offer no real clues as to who might benefit from the ultra-low turnout in the closely watched fight between Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) or the dogfight between several contenders in the newly created NY-10.

Brooklyn, which has far more registered voters than Manhattan, lagged behind with 60,657 votes. Some parts of Brooklyn were voting in NY-10, but other incumbents were running unopposed.

Turnout was particularly puny in Queens, with 13,632 votes cast, and the Bronx, where 13,683 people went to the polls.

Staten Island remarkably outpaced the two much more populous boroughs with 15,386 votes tallied.

People vote in a polling station in a residential building in New York's 12th Congressional District on Aug. 23, 2022, in New York City. (Spencer Platt/)

The numbers are running about 30% below the already anemic totals in June’s first round of primaries of approximately 527,000 total votes.