Live Election Updates: Hochul and Zeldin win respective primaries, AP projects

10: 29 p.m.: Long Island congressman Lee Zeldin was projected to be the winner of the Republican gubernatorial primary, according to the AP. See the recap here.

9:44 p.m.: The mood is festive at the Giuliani camp in Midtown Manhattan, where the booze is flowing, Frank Sinatra is blaring on the loudspeakers and the crowd is hoping for an upset. Though the night is early, the former New York City mayor’s son is closing out the polls with a slight lead.

“Keep your spirits high,” someone took the mic to tell the bustling ballroom shortly after the numbers started coming in. “Hopefully it’s going to be a nail biter.”

The room erupted in applause and horn blasts. While the votes dribble in, people are dining on hamburgers, quesadillas and dim sum, refreshing their phones and watching the live results on three big TV screens. Neither Andrew Giuliani nor his father have made an appearance yet.

But many of their supporters are here, including Guardian Angel and former mayoral candidate, Curtis Sliwa, whose red beret-clad group is working security at the event.

9:26 p.m.: Gov. Kathy Hochul is the projected winner of the Democratic gubernatorial primary. See full story here.

9:15 p.m.: Three fully stocked bars. A spread of pasta, cheese and hors d'oeuvres. And a VIP section filled with donors and labor leaders. That’s the scene at Tribeca Rooftop, the event venue where the state Democratic Committee is hosting what they hope will be a victory party for Gov. Kathy Hochul and Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado.

When she does speak, Hochul will deliver her remarks underneath a massive skylight – a literal glass ceiling. That’s no mistake: Hochul would be the first woman to win a major party’s nomination for New York governor.

Among the early speakers at the party were U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Assemblymember Latrice Walker, a Democrat from Brooklyn. All three brought up the recent Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

“In two words, what the court has done is an absolute disgrace,” Schumer said. “The court is something we have to fight. They have been taken over by MAGA Republicans. Are we going to fight back?”

The crowd cheered.

“When are reproductive rights are under attack, what are we going to do?” Walker asked the crowd. “Fight back!” the crowd roared back.

Check out the live election results tracker:

9 p.m.: The 9 p.m. hour came and went on Tuesday and the primary election polls have closed.

The counting of ballots has officially begun as New Yorkers wait to see their Democratic and Republican nominees for governor will be for this November's general election. Voters were also tasked with deciding who will be their nominee for lieutenant governor (the Republican Party’s designee is running in an uncontested election), judicial delegates, judges and numerous state committee and district leaders. New Yorkers across the state will also soon find out who gets nominated from each party for the state Assembly. See below for live updates throughout the day.

Republican candidate for governor Andrew Giuliani held his election night party on West 51st Street in Manhattan, where the drinks were flowing before the polls closed. Democratic candidate for governor Jumaane Williams opened the doors for his election night party in Bushwick, Brooklyn, where the grills started firing and the music started pumping about 30 minutes before the polls closed.

Incumbent Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul launched her party at the Tribeca Rooftop event venue, where she is expected to speak underneath a glass ceiling. If she wins the nomination, Hochul will be the first woman to win the Democratic primary for governor in New York.

LIVE UPDATES:

7:48 p.m.: Primary voters were still trickling into the polls across the city Tuesday evening, with just a few hours left to cast their ballots. Several people who came to vote at a school on West 115th Street in Harlem had to scramble to find a different polling place after learning they'd gone to the wrong one. One woman told Gothamist she was upset as she walked quickly out the door and down the sidewalk, but declined to give an interview, because she was in a rush to get to her proper voting site.

Columbia University professor and longtime Harlem resident Jamal Joseph, 69, said he knows lots of people didn’t turn out because they were confused, or had voting fatigue. But between the efforts in many parts of the country to suppress voting and the recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions on guns and abortion, he said he thought it was more important than ever to exercise his rights.

"If we think we're tired now, and if it's too much of an effort to get out to the polls because it's a summer day or because we've been out, we're going to really feel tired when we see the far-reaching effects of what's happening with the Supreme Court, what's happening on the state level in many states,” he said. “That's a fatigue and oppression that is going to be with us for an entire generation, maybe two generations.”

Joseph said he wanted to lead by example for younger generations, and to honor the people who fought for him to be able to vote. He said it’s important to turn out for more than just the presidential elections, because partisan politics play out on the local level, too.

“We can’t just rally in the street. We have to rally at the polls,” Joseph said. “We can’t just march when something has happened, when an innocent person has been killed by police or somebody with gun violence. We have to march to the polls.”

In Brooklyn, Miranda Nelson, 36, of Bed-Stuy, was excited to vote, stopping by P.S. 81 late afternoon. She cast a ballot for New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and Ana Maria Archila, his preferred candidate for lieutenant governor.

“I think they are what New York needs to move us forward," she said of the two candidates.

Vaughn Jefferson, 41, a Bed-Stuy native, said he voted for Gov. Kathy Hochul, who's seeking her first full term after replacing former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who resigned in 2021.

“I actually attended this school in kindergarten," Jefferson said, who brought his daughter with him to vote. "So to actually come here and vote [for the] first time with my daughter ... it’s definitely a triumphant moment for me.”

Jefferson said, as a Black man, it's important for him to vote as a way of having his voice heard.

5:58 p.m. For some voters, finding their poll site on Tuesday posed its own unique challenge.

Thomas Sciacca, who lives in midtown, received a mailer from the city Board of Elections telling him his Election Day poll site was Madison Square Garden lobby, with an entrance at 4 Pennsylvania Plz. Sciacca went to vote in the afternoon, and only found confused MSG workers at the location.

Sciacca called the city BOE and was told that his poll site had changed. He needed to walk to the CUNY building at 34th Street and Fifth Avenue, he was told.

“It’s hot AF today and I’m walking around aimlessly at MSG for 20 minutes before I gave up and called [the BOE],” Sciacca told Gothamist in a text message. He said there were three other voters there that borrowed his phone and were instructed by the city BOE to go to different locations.

MSG was supposed to serve as a poll site for some 4,211 voters and six election districts. A notice did go out to voters indicating it would be used for the June 28th primary. But city BOE officials said it needed to be changed at the last minute because the venue was no longer available: Machine Gun Kelly has a concert scheduled for Tuesday night at the site.

City BOE officials said they tried to notify voters of the last-minute change.

“The Board of Elections sent out notices to voters in this district on June 1st,” Vincent Ignizio, deputy executive director of the city BOE, told Gothamist. He said there had been a miscommunication between the site manager and staff at the borough office about the venue’s availability.

“We regret if anybody went to MSG and hope to return to that site in future elections,” Ignizio added.

MSG has been used as an early voting and Election Day poll site in previous elections.

The city BOE has 1,200 poll sites across the five boroughs.

Thousands of voters did experience poll site changes in connection to the redistricting process. Those changes were noted in a red box on the city BOE mailers.

4:51 p.m. With just five hours left before the polls close, Mayor Eric Adams was in a jovial mood as he cast his ballot at P.S. 81 in Bed-Stuy this afternoon, taking selfies and laughing with poll workers. He put on his mask as he picked up his ballot and headed to a booth. Adams, the former Brooklyn borough president, has a private home in Bed-Stuy.

When asked about the extremely low turnout numbers throughout the primary, Adams suggested that mandatory field trips to polling sites might help get young people engaged in the process early.

He also joked: “We have to get more people engaged and, you know, I think one way to get people engaged a lot is to make sure I'm on the ballot.”

Adams, a Democrat, endorsed Gov. Kathy Hochul for the primary nearly two weeks ago, choosing her over Long Island Rep. Tom Suozzi, a close ally who was under consideration for a deputy mayor role in the Adams administration.

3:51 p.m. — On the Republican side, polls have indicated the four-way race for the Republican gubernatorial candidate is still fluid.

The eventual primary winner faces an uphill battle. No Republican has won the governor’s mansion since George Pataki was elected to a third term in 2002.

Lee Zeldin, the Long Island congressman who is the party favorite, suggested Tuesday morning that he would win the primary as long as turnout was strong.

“As long as everyone comes out, we’re going to have a big win today,” said Zeldin, who arrived with his family to cast his ballot at a polling site in Mastic Beach.

Over the years, Zeldin, a lawyer and U.S. Army reservist, has shifted further to the right and pledged his fealty to President Donald Trump. He was among those in the House who voted to overturn the 2020 election.

One of his opponents, Andrew Giuliani, turned up to vote in a campaign truck at a Battery Park City poll site before appearing at a campaign stop in Queens with Councilmember Vickie Paladino.

The son of the former mayor Rudy Giuliani previously worked in the Trump administration as a White House aide.

On Tuesday, the senior Giuliani was in the spotlight after Mayor Eric Adams accused him of falsely accusing a supermarket worker of assault.

Harry Wilson, a businessman who self-funded his campaign, also cast his ballot this morning in his hometown of Scarsdale in Westchester County. He has tried to appeal to conservative voters disenchanted with the economy and Albany.

“This is our once in a generation opportunity to fix the state,” he said in a video posted to Twitter.

Rob Astorino, the two-term Westchester County executive, voted with his family this morning.

2:05 p.m. — Around 200,000 New York City residents have turned up to vote for this year’s June primary as of midday Tuesday, according to the city’s Board of Elections. The number includes those who voted early last week.

“That would be a very low turnout for a primary but we were expecting it,” said John Mollenkopf, the director of the Center for Urban Research at CUNY who analyzes voter data.

Mollenkopf said he expected the number to rise to at least 400,000 by the end of the day. Whatever the final total, it is likely to fall short of the turnout in the 2018 primary, when there were over 900,000 city voters. That election featured a gubernatorial race between then incumbent Andrew Cuomo and the actress Cynthia Nixon.

Mollenkopf said the two separate primaries that came as a result of the contested redistricting process this year likely contributed to confusion among some voters. Tuesday’s ballot contains contests for governor and the state Assembly. Congressional and state Senate races will be decided on the August 23rd primary.

He said the other reason for a lackluster turnout is that voters may be fairly content with the incumbent Gov. Kathy Hochul.

The 2018 primary turnout, he said, was helped by voters who were angry at then Governor Andrew Cuomo.

So far, Brooklyn and Manhattan led the count with about 62,000 voters who have checked in at polling stations.

In an interview with Gothamist, Vincent Ignizio, the deputy executive director of the city BOE, acknowledged that voter turnout was “somewhat light” and that the board was trying to urge voters to head to the polls before they close at 9 p.m. tonight.

1:13 p.m. — Voters called in to WNYC's The Brian Lehrer Show Tuesday to discuss whom they voted for and why.

Benita, an Upper East Side voter, mixed and matched on her ballot. She voted for Gov. Kathy Hochul to be the Democratic nominee in November and Ana Maria Archila, who is running alongside Public Advocate Jumaane Williams in the Democratic contest.

“I’ve been a fan of hers ever since I saw the video of her reaming Jeff Flake,” Benita said, referring to the former U.S. Senator whom Archila famously confronted inside an elevator during the confirmation hearings for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Jimmy, a Queens resident who’s voted for over 50 years, said he too mixed and matched. He voted for Archila and Long Island Rep. Tom Suozzi, a gubernatorial candidate who chose former City Councilmember Diana Reyna as his preferred lieutenant governor. Archila is considered a far-left candidate while Suozzi is running to the right in his nomination bid. Governors and lieutenant governors technically run independently of each other, though they often present themselves as a combined ticket, meaning voters could pick nominees from competing campaigns in the primaries.

Jimmy was particularly unhappy with Hochul’s public subsidy deal for a new Buffalo Bills stadium.

Camile, a Roslyn resident, said she too wasn’t happy with Hochul’s stadium deal, but decided to vote for her over Suozzi. He represents her in Congress, and she said she couldn’t vote for someone who’s giving up his House seat in order to run for governor.

Another listener named Frank voted Republican, telling Lehrer he voted for Long Island Rep. Lee Zeldin. He called Hochul a “communist” who is surrounded by “criminals,” referencing Hochul’s pick for Brian Benjamin for lieutenant governor. Benjamin now faces a criminal probe into an alleged bribery scheme.

“Both sides can see that they can work with him,” Frank said of Zeldin.

12:11 p.m. — Low turnout appears to be a common theme among many poll sites.

At the Long Island City High School poll site in Astoria, less than 60 people had voted by 10:30 a.m., according to a poll worker.

Margie Howard, 65, said she came out to vote because of wealth inequalities she witnesses in New York City every day. She said she voted for Gov. Kathy Hochul, who is seeking her first full term, because she wants to see a moderate leader.

“In New York, I think you have to stay in the middle because you cannot please everybody,” she said. “I’d like to see a lady governor for a change.”

Brad Makarowski, 47, said he thinks primary elections are more important than general elections since voters have control over which candidate gets placed on party tickets.

Skyrocketing housing prices in New York City are the main reason he came out, he said.

Having been forced to move out after a 30% rent hike, he said he wants to see elected leaders restrain landlords.

“There were no protections for me, and I know I’m lucky,” he said. “I can’t imagine what everyone else is going through.”

Matthew Blake, 26, a ninth grade English teacher in Brooklyn, said he wants to see candidates support progressive policies like the Green New Deal and more resources devoted to schools.

"I feel that public education truly is the way that we can support a strong and robust middle class; unfortunately CUNY is well underfunded right now,” he said.

At Queens Public Library at Elmhurst, just under 10 people came in to vote by 8:45 a.m.

10:25 a.m. — Jumaane Williams, the New York City public advocate and Democratic candidate for governor, voted this morning with his wife and baby daughter in tow.

In a video posted to Twitter, Williams is jokingly asked by his wife who he voted for after coming out of a Brooklyn poll site.

“I’m not telling you,” he says with a smile.

Williams, who’s been endorsed by the Working Families Party, is vying to win as a progressive candidate in what is a rematch of sorts. Back in 2018, he ran for lieutenant governor where he narrowly lost to Kathy Hochul, who was then Andrew Cuomo’s running mate.

In shades of that election, Ana Maria Archila, Williams’ running mate, is trying to ride momentum from left-leaning Democrats.

She appeared in Park Slope this morning campaigning with City Councilmember Shahana Hanif and City Comptroller Brad Lander, who endorsed her.

Hochul, who voted on the first day of the early voting period last week, was spotted on the Upper West Side this morning with a host of elected officials including representatives Jerrold Nadler and Carolyn Maloney, who were both together. The latter two are set to face off in an August 23rd primary in what is expected to be a highly competitive race to represent a new district comprising the Upper East and Upper West Side.

Earlier this morning, Lieutenant Gov. Antonio Delgado was in Rhinebeck -- a two-hour drive from New York City -- who voted alongside his wife and two boys.

Meanwhile, Long Island Congressman Tom Suozzi, who’s running as a moderate, tweeted an morning message to his supporters urging them to vote for himself and his running mate, Diana Reyna.

8:10 a.m. — Crown Heights resident Noah Koch voted this morning at the Brooklyn Museum, finding local elections just as important as the ones on the national level, despite saying they “get less attention.”

"They have a lot more impact on the community around you so I wanted to be sure to put my vote in for the candidates that I care about,” Koch said.

Karen Bull was supposed to vote at Brooklyn Museum, her polling site the last 15 years, but because of redistricting, she was forced to go to another poll site.

“I’m not happy because I should have gotten some notice,” Bull said. “This is a little bit closer to my house.” But Bull, who was also motivated to come to the polls because of the Roe v. Wade, said she wasn't deterred.

7:45 a.m. — Voters in Manhattan are slowly trickling in at Robert Wagner Middle School, a polling site on the Upper East Side, where there were more poll workers than voters. Venice Anthony, a nurse, said voting was extremely easy at the school.

"It was a smooth process," Anthony said. "I voted because I want to be involved. A lot of people don't vote, they really care what's happening until the elected officials are in office and they start complaining. I just want to be part of the process."

Anthony was driven to come out to vote after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The same went for Clifford Feng, who also voted at the Robert Wagner Middle School. Both were among the early birds who cast a ballot in a primary that's expected to produce low voter turnout.

The poll site is located in the 76th Assembly District, which was among the busier districts during the early voting period. According to data Gothamist requested from the New York City Board of Elections, in the top five state Assembly districts with the highest overall turnout, four of the districts didn't have a competitive Assembly primary. Those include Assemblymember Danny O'Donnell's district on the Upper West Side; Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon's district in Brooklyn Heights and Park Slope; Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal's district on the Upper West Side; and Assemblymember Bobby Carroll's district in Prospect Heights and Park Slope.

In districts where there is an Assembly primary, early voting turnout has been highest in:

• Manhattan’s 76th Assembly District, which is on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and pits incumbent Rebecca Seawright against Patrick Bobilin.
• In Brooklyn, the 57th Assembly District, which covers Fort Greene and Clinton Hill. That’s the race between incumbent Pharra Souffrant Forrest and Olankie Alabi.
• In the Bronx, it’s the 82nd Assembly District, which includes part of Throggs Neck, City Island and the East Bronx featuring the three-way match up between longtime incumbent Michael Benedetto, Jonathan Soto and Algernon Quattlebaum is the highest turnout district in that borough.
• In Queens, it’s the 32nd Assembly District in Southeast Queens where long-serving member Vivian Cook faces a challenge from Anthony Andrews Jr.
• And in Staten Island, it is the Republican primary for the 63rd Assembly District between Sam Pirozzolo and Paul Ciurcina Jr. I should not the incumbent in that race, Democrat Michael Cusick, does not face a primary challenge.

What else to know about today's primary:

The main event is the race for governor. On the Democratic side, Gov. Kathy Hochul is seeking a full term in office, 10 months after ascending to the post following disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s resignation. Hochul, who was picked as the party’s preferred candidate in February, has steered left on issues, mainly on guns and abortion (find out where the candidates stand on issues here and here).

She is facing two challengers — New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and Long Island Rep. Tom Suozzi — whose campaigns haven’t quite taken off but are politically well-defined.

Four candidates are vying for the Republican nomination: Long Island Rep. Lee Zeldin, Andrew Giuliani, former Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino, and businessman Harry Wilson. A poll taken last week by SurveyUSA, which asked 538 likely Republicans who they’d support for governor, found 25% of respondents saying they’d back Zeldin, while 23% said Giuliani, son of former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani. A recap of the GOP two debates can be found here and here.

If you’re experiencing any issues at the polls, you can report them here to the state Attorney General’s Office or by calling (866) 390-2922. You can also tell us about your experience — send us an email at [email protected] (subject line: 6.28 “Voting Problems”).

Check back throughout the day for regular updates on how Primary Day is going in New York from our team of reporters.