Later this week, it will be 100 days until the start of early voting in the 2025 mayoral primary. For the next few weeks, NY1 will go topic-by-topic through the most important issues.

To kick that off this week, NY1 is taking a step back to look at the crowded Democratic primary. The early voting period will begin on June 14 ahead of primary election day itself on June 24.

Participation rates for primary voting have fluctuated over the years. In 2013, around 680,000 people voted in the primary for mayor. Four years later, it was down to less than 500,000.

In 2021, amid the pandemic, more than 1 million primary voters turned out. However, that was still only around 25% of eligible voters.

Participation rates also vary by borough. In 2021, Manhattan saw 33% of eligible voters turn out for the mayoral primary. In the Bronx, it was only 19%.

This year's primary will only be the second time that the race for mayor has used a ranked-choice voting ballot. That means voters are asked to mark multiple candidates in your order of preference over multiple rounds. 

Each time the last-place candidate is eliminated, the votes are reallocated until there is a single candidate that gets to the threshold necessary for the win, with 50% of the vote. 

Relatively low turnouts in a citywide race means that it's important for candidates to reach out to communities that vote consistently, including organized labor groups.

A reporter from The Chief spoke with "News All Day" about the role of union endorsements in a race like this.

"Endorsements do a lot of things. It's a signal to the members of those unions to obviously go vote for those members,” Duncan Freeman said. “But also to canvas for them, to throw their financial support behind them. Unions have a lot of resources in terms of financing, in terms of getting members out to canvas for candidates. They can offer various kinds of support.” 

The election is 16 weeks away, which isn’t a lot of time for candidates to make their impressions. And more and more New Yorkers are taking advantage of early voting. 

In the 2021 primary, nearly 19% of voters came out in person for early voting. About 12% voted with an absentee ballot. If those numbers hold, about two-thirds of the voters will actually be out on Election Day itself on June 24.