Eric Adams is on his way to being the next mayor of New York after the last bill

Eric Adams stayed on track to become the next mayor of New York City after an absentee count of votes released Tuesday night showed him to maintain a narrow lead over other Democratic primary candidates .

According to the latest election board balance sheet, Adams, the retired Bronx district president and police captain, had a 50.5% to 49.5% advantage over Kathryn Garcia, the former head of the Bronx district. sanitation. They were separated by 8,426 votes, with only about 3,700 pending. Maya Wiley, the leading progressive candidate, came in third.

In a statement, Adams said: “While there are still few votes left to count, the results are clear: a historic, diverse, five-quarter coalition led by working-class New Yorkers has led us to victory in the primary democracy for the mayor of New York “.

The results were unofficial and can still be challenged, but the Associated Press called the primary for Adams Tuesday night. The various campaigns threatened legal action after an extraordinary one errada by the board led to a wrong count a week ago and messed up the city’s first-ranked elections.

The board blamed the mistake, which included 135,000 “test” ballots, for human error and apologized.

Adams, who would be the city’s second black mayor, after David Dinkins, presented himself as a moderate capable of using police to fight armed violence and hate crime, while reforming the department. Both he and Garcia, who demonstrated a late outburst of support, rejected progressive calls to “spread” the police.

Given the large number of Democratic voters in New York City, the winner of the party’s primaries is expected to prevail in the November general election.

In the case of the by-election, voters were allowed to select up to five candidates on their ballot, in order of preference. The losing candidates would be eliminated and their votes would be reassigned successively until only two challenges remained.

Adams came first after the initial vote. But his leadership fell to just 15,908 votes after the results of the ranking process were announced last week. When they were corrected a day later, the difference with Garcia was only 14,755 ballots, with a total of 124,000 ballots per absence.