NEW YORK

New Yorkers are heading to the polls Tuesday in a highly contested mayoral election.

Poll sites opened at 6 am local time (1100GMT) and will close at 9 pm (0200GMT Wednesday). Early voting took place from Oct. 25 to Nov. 2, with more than 735,000 ballots cast, marking a new city record, according to the New York City Board of Elections.

At the center of the race is Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, 34, born in Kampala, Uganda to Indian parents and raised in New York from the age of seven. If elected, he would become the city’s first Muslim and South Asian mayor.

Mamdani, an avowed democratic socialist, has run a campaign focused on affordability and social services, promising free buses, universal childcare, city-run grocery stores, rent-stabilized housing and a plan to raise the minimum wage to $30 per hour by 2030 from $16.50 currently.

All of this would be paid for, he says, by raising the corporate tax rate to 11.5% -- the same as in neighboring New Jersey -- as well as a 2% income tax on those earning over $1 million per year.

He has also pledged that he would order the New York Police Department (NYPD) to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should he enter the city, citing the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant over war crimes in Gaza.

Competing against him are former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa, a rightwing community activist and radio talk show host.

Cuomo is running as an Independent after he lost the Democratic primary to Mamdani in June. He has since sought to cast himself as the best positioned to lead the city following decades of public service, including leading the state of New York during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A compilation of polling compiled by the Real Clear Politics website has Mamdani up by an average of 14.3%, a massive lead heading into Election Day.

The review has Mamdani at 46.1% to Cuomo’s 31.8%. Sliwa sits in third place at 16.3%, and it is unclear if his base would back Cuomo, a longtime vocal Democrat.