What Went Down During The 2021 Elections

India Walton, the democratic socialist candidate for mayor of Buffalo, New York, conceded the race this afternoon to incumbent Mayor Byron Brown, who waged a write-in campaign to keep his job after losing to Walton in the Democratic primary. The race exposed schisms within the New York Democratic Party, but ultimately, Brown paired Democrats still loyal to him with Republicans to win reelection. Right now, write-ins account for 59 percent of the votes cast in the mayoral race, compared with 41 percent for Walton, and it’s likely that almost all of those write-ins are for Brown.

With Proposals 3 and 4 (to legalize same-day voter registration and no-excuse absentee voting, respectively) currently failing in New York, many liberals have been critical of the fact that there was no big push to pass them (whereas Republicans actively campaigned against them). And it seems like voting-rights advocates left a lot of votes on the table as a result:

Ranked-choice tabulations are complete in Minneapolis, and they’ve confirmed that moderate Jacob Frey will be reelected as mayor, defeating two progressives who had charged that Frey hadn’t done enough to reform the police both before and after last year’s murder of George Floyd. Minneapolis voters also passed City Question 1, which gives the mayor’s office more power, and rejected City Question 2, which would have replaced the police department with a department of public safety. Add it all up, and it appears Minneapolitans have issued a vote of confidence in the status quo despite the past year-plus of turmoil in the city.