New: NYC, Buffalo Among 6 of 100 Biggest U.S. Cities with Closed Mayoral Primaries

Reinvent Albany looked at how the 100 biggest cities in the United States select their mayors. We found that cities choose mayors in a totally different way than how their state’s voters choose governors, members of Congress, or presidents.  Though many details differ, 90% of big cities have completely open mayoral elections in which members of any party can vote or run. Only six percent of cities have closed primaries, including New York City and Buffalo.

Highlights

• Open Elections: 89 cities hold completely open elections in which party registration does not determine who is eligible to vote or run.
• Semi-Open Election: 5 cities have “semi-open primaries” in which voters not registered to a political party can vote in a closed party primary.
• Closed Elections: 6 cities hold closed elections in which party registration determines whether a voter is eligible to vote or run in an election.
• Deep Blue Cities with High Voter Turnout Hold Open Elections: Voter turnout is extremely high in the deeply Democratic cities that hold open elections and use Ranked-Choice Voting. Compare NYC’s 2025 general election mayoral vote of 41.6% of registered voters — the highest in 50 years — to San Francisco’s 79%, Phoenix’s 77%, and Portland, Oregon’s 66%.

New York City and Buffalo Among 6% of Cities with Closed Elections
NYC, Buffalo, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Charlotte, and Baltimore are the only six of the biggest 100 cities holding closed elections. These cities hold closed primary elections in which voters must be registered members of a political party to vote or run in a closed party primary.

NYC and Buffalo are the only two cities that allow candidates to run on more than one ballot line in the general election. Two states, New York and Connecticut, allow cities to use “disaggregated fusion,” where a candidate can appear on multiple ballot lines and have their votes from each line combined: for instance, the Democratic Party and Working Families Party lines.

NYC and Buffalo allow losing primary candidates to run in the general election. Many cities do not allow “sore losers,” like Andrew Cuomo in NYC 2025, to run in the general election. Some even prevent “sore losers” from running as write-in candidates, like Byron Brown in Buffalo 2021

New York City and Buffalo both have a large share of unaffiliated voters who cannot vote in Democratic Party primaries. Because Democrats far outnumber Republicans in both cities, the Democratic primary winner is typically the favorite for mayor.

Explore and download the detailed city-by-city dataset.