NEW YORK CITY (NewsNation Now) — While the 2022 New York City Mayoral election is still a year away, Andrew Yang leads the pack among likely Democratic voters with 32% support according to the latest survey from NewsNation and Emerson College.

Yang announced his candidacy officially on Martin Luther King Jr. day this year and has faced some scrutiny over living outside New York City during the pandemic.

Yang ran for president in 2020 and galvanized a large following for his plans around universal basic income and other economic reforms.

Behind Yang in the NewsNation/Emerson poll is Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams with 19% and former counsel to Mayor de Blasio Maya Wiley at 9%. NYC comptroller Scott Stringer comes in at 6% and former NYC Department of Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia rounds out the top five at 5%.

Mayor Bill de Blasio is term limited and will not run for reelection in the mayoral race.

When broken down by demographics, Yang leads with white New Yorkers by 50% and Asian New Yorkers by 60%.

Adams leads with Black voters with 31% support and Hispanic voters with 26% support.

Yang has the youth support with 56% of all voters between the ages of 18-29 supporting his candidacy.

Forty-one percent of male voters and 26% of female voters support Yang’s candidacy as well.

When it comes to what issues voters are most concerned about the mayor addressing, COVID-19 came first at 18% with jobs (15%), homelessness (12%), education (11%), housing (12%), and healthcare (10%) all following closely behind.

This is the first election where ranked-choice voting will be used in New York City. This means the candidates will be ranked by voters’ preference on the ballot.

If no candidate wins the majority of first preference voters, the candidate with the fewest first-preference votes is eliminated. The second choice of those who supported the eliminated candidate will then get their votes. Votes are then recounted and this repeats until one candidate is chosen as the winner.

Forty percent of New York Democratic primary voters have heard little about the system with a third (33%) knowing nothing about it.

Eleven percent of New Yorkers chose Adams as their second choice candidate with Yang closely following as the second choice of 9% of registered Democratic primary voters.

A majority of voters surveyed did not believe it was important for the next mayor to be a person of color (62% did not) or a woman (65% did not).

Thirty-nine percent do think it is important for the next mayor to be a person of color and 35% think the next mayor should be a woman.

Poll information

The New York Emerson College/WPIX-TV/NewsNation poll was conducted March 1-2, 2021. The sample consisted of New York registered voters, n=700, with a Credibility Interval (CI) similar to a poll’s margin of error (MOE) of +/- 3.6 percentage points. The data sets were weighted by gender, age, education, race, party affiliation and region. It is important to remember that subsets based on gender, age, party breakdown, ethnicity, and region carry with them higher margins of error, as the sample size is reduced. Data was collected using an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system of landlines, SMS-to-web, and an online panel provided by Prime Panels