Citywide primary elections are now underway Tuesday in the five boroughs. Polls are now open around the city to help decide party nominations for mayor, comptroller, public advocate, borough president and city council.

There's an argument to be made that today is a bigger day than the general election will be. Due to party breakdowns in the city, chances are whoever wins the primary in certain races, like the democratic mayoral primary, will be the heavy favorite in November, which is why there are so many competitive races.

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That also adds extra importance to the new voting process today - the first citywide election to use ranked choice voting.

If nobody gets more than 50% of first place votes, then whoever got the least is eliminated. The second choices from each of those ballots gets awarded the vote until someone reaches that 50% threshold.

Due to the new voting process, many winners aren’t expected to be announced tonight.

The city has already said it will not even release the results of the first round of ranked choice voting until next Tuesday, which will only include in-person ballots.

On the Tuesday after that, July 6, it will post another update including absentee and mail-in ballots. If there's no winner then, it will wait until the Tuesday after that and keep going until there is a winner.

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