GOODER AND HARDER, FUN CITY: Shocking poll shows Zohran Mamdani overtaking Andrew Cuomo in NYC’s ranked choice primary.

Lefty upstart Zohran Mamdani has leapfrogged over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the city’s ranked choice Democratic primary for mayor, according to a stunning new poll released Monday.

In its hypothetical initial round of voting, Cuomo’s lead shrinks to 3 percentage points, with 35% of likely Democratic voters supporting him compared to 32% for Mamdani and 13% for city Comptroller Brad Lander, the Emerson College Polling/Pix 11/The Hill survey found.

City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams follows with 8%, Scott Stringer 3% and 5% split between candidates Zellnor Myrie, Whitney Tilson, Jessica Ramos and Michael Blake, with another 4% undecided.

But since no one garners the more than 50% of the vote needed to win outright, the ranked choice system kicks in. That means that even if a voter’s first choice is eliminated in successive rounds of calculations, their other picks could still be in the mix and emerge as the eventual overall winner.

Mamdani finally surpasses Cuomo in the eighth round of the simulated ranked choice voting — 51.8% to 48.2% — in the latest poll conducted June 18-20.

But these are just the preliminaries. As Jeffrey Blehar noted last week in a column titled, “I Love the New York City Mayoral Race,” “regardless of who actually wins the Democratic primary, this race will be rerun a few months from now in the general election:”

Yes, the New York mayoral race is exactly the sort of Carnival of Fools I live for, a circus of chaos with no heroes, not even protagonists, and no possible happy ending. And the best thing about it all is that this mess won’t even end on Tuesday night; in theory, that’s only when it begins. For one thing, the needlessly complex and misleading “ranked-choice” ballot adopted in 2021 likely ensures that it will be days before we know who has actually won the race. But even more ridiculous than that is the possibility that, once the race has been won, it will continue rolling onwards with the same cast of characters.

You see, because of New York’s ridiculous ballot access laws, Mamdani and Cuomo have already secured ballot lines for the November election — with different parties. (Cuomo has his own bespoke party line called “Fight and Deliver;” Mamdani will have the Working Families Party line handed to him if he wants it.) That means that regardless of who actually wins the Democratic primary, this race will be rerun a few months from now in the general election, this time with Republican Curtis Sliwa and the incumbent mayor himself also on the ballot splitting the vote. Perhaps one or the other will drop out before then — if Cuomo is humiliated on Tuesday, I’m not sure how he can remain in the race — but the potential for an epically disastrous four-car electoral pileup in November remains tantalizingly close.

And I’ll admit that, at this point, I’m rooting for it. I’m rooting for it as only a Chicagoan can: as an embittered man who watched his own city decline over the last 20 years, mayor by mayor, until we voted to commit suicide in the spring of 2023 by electing Brandon Johnson.

John Nolte adds, “should Mamdani win, he would make former Democrat Mayor Bill DeBlasio look like Barry Goldwater. Mamdani is a bona fide socialist who has promised disastrous rent freezes, despises Israel, would almost certainly kill any kind of school reform or choice, tie the hands of the police, and is anti-business. Mamdani is a radical activist who doesn’t hide his radical activism. New York is already in desperate straits and he would drive this once great city right to its knees.”

Hey, speaking of DeBlasio: 10 Questions With Zohran Mamdani. Including:

2. Who was the best New York City mayor in your lifetime?

In my lifetime? Bill de Blasio.

Plan accordingly, New Yorkers: