Hochul Banks on the City, Blakeman on the Suburbs as Nine Days of Early Voting Begin
Early voting in New York opened on Saturday, October 24, and runs for nine days through November 1, with Election Day on Tuesday, November 3. State elections officials reported about 265,000 early votes cast statewide on Saturday, including roughly 87,000 in New York City — almost double the first-day totals of four years ago.
The New York City Board of Elections reported 86,215 ballots cast on Saturday, nearly twice the first-day turnout of the 2022 gubernatorial midterms and above the 79,409 recorded on day one of the 2025 general election. More than 165,000 votes were cast over the opening weekend, compared with 97,155 over the first two days the last time Governor Kathy Hochul was on the ballot in 2022.
Governor Kathy Hochul returned to her hometown of Buffalo on Saturday, voting early and rallying Erie County Democrats at the party's coordinated campaign headquarters. She spoke about her Western New York political roots and the region's importance to her reelection bid against Republican challenger Bruce Blakeman, the Nassau County executive. Democrats gathered in Buffalo while Republicans held a rival rally in Lancaster, both in Erie County.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani campaigned alongside Hochul twice around the start of early voting: Friday evening in Williamsburg's McCarren Park in Brooklyn and Sunday at a labor canvass kickoff at Medgar Evers College in Crown Heights. The two had already appeared together at a working-families rally in the Bronx and in a campaign advertisement. Mamdani called Hochul "a partner" on the cost-of-living crisis, especially childcare, and the weekend doubled as a thank-you: Hochul was among the first establishment Democrats to endorse him after his June 2025 primary victory.
Blakeman centered his closing message on affordability and public safety, calling New York "the highest-taxed state in America" and saying utility bills run 70 percent above the national average. He pledged to cut taxes, cut utility bills in half, back the police and restore law and order. On October 17 he held a canvass kickoff in Hawthorne, Westchester County, treating the battleground suburb as key terrain, and his campaign has worked throughout to tie Hochul to Mamdani under a "Hochul-Mamdani agenda" label.
A Quinnipiac poll put Hochul 14 points ahead of Blakeman, while a Siena College poll conducted September 11–17 had Hochul at 50 percent and Blakeman at 41 percent. Blakeman argues polls routinely undersample Republicans and says the race is far closer. The Siena survey also found voters saying, by 50 percent to 30 percent, that Mamdani's support for Hochul helps her campaign.
The candidates met on October 13 for their first and only debate at Spectrum News NY1's Manhattan studios, clashing over President Donald Trump, a recent ICE-involved shooting, energy prices and inflation. Blakeman called Mamdani an antisemite and said antisemitism had risen on Hochul's watch; Hochul rejected the attack and said keeping the Jewish community safe, as governor of the largest Jewish population outside Israel, is a solemn responsibility.
Hochul won a full term in 2022 by six percentage points over Republican Lee Zeldin, the narrowest New York governor's race in decades. Her closing strategy bets on running up the score in the five boroughs with help from the young progressive voters who carried Mamdani a year ago. Blakeman bets on the suburbs — Long Island, Westchester — and upstate, where anger over prices, taxes and public safety runs hottest. With nine days of early voting underway, both sides are treating turnout itself as the campaign.