Shawn Griffiths
NEW YORK CITY - A new poll released this week from Open Primaries and the Independent Voter Project (IVP) found most Democrats in New York City support opening the city’s primaries to independent voters.
But there is an even more explosive finding.
According to the survey, nearly 40% of registered party members say they consider themselves independent voters who are only registered with the Democratic Party for one reason: to vote in primary elections.
“The current closed primary system forces people to lie in order to vote,” said John Opdycke, president and founder of Open Primaries.
“Thirty-nine percent admit they're independents who were forced to register as Democratic just to get access to the ballot. Our opponents insist that closed primaries are necessary to protect the integrity of the process. It’s actually the opposite.”
Open Primaries and IVP commissioned IVC Media to conduct the poll from June 11–12, 2026. It featured 1,394 registered Democrats in NYC who voted in at least one of the 2024 or 2025 general elections.
It has a margin of error of ±3.1 percentage points at 95% confidence.
New York City conducts local elections using a closed partisan primary system, meaning only registered Republicans and Democrats can participate in their respective party’s primaries. Independent voters are barred from these taxpayer-funded elections.
This means 1-in-5 voters—or nearly 1.2 million New Yorkers—who are registered unaffiliated.
Chad Peace
Since only party members can vote in the primaries, independents are left with two options: Join a party or don’t vote. Turns out, when coerced by the system, many of them have chosen to join the Democratic Party just to have a meaningful say in local elections.
NYC leans heavily Democrat. The party holds all executive offices and nearly all seats on the city council—46 to the Republican’s 5. In most contests, the Democratic primary is the election, and independents know it.
Independent voters have petitioned NYC Charter Revision Commissions (CRC) year after year to put an open primary measure on the ballot. In 2025, dozens of New Yorkers showed up to hearings to demand the right to vote in elections they fund.
Shawn Griffiths
The CRC considered different proposals. It even acknowledged all the voters who are shut out of taxpayer-funded elections because of the closed system in place—-including more than half (54%) of registered independents who are voters of color.
However, the CRC ultimately chose not to move forward with any kind of open primary proposal, whether it be a nonpartisan all-voter and all-candidate open primary or new rules that would simply allow independent voters to pick a party ballot in partisan primaries.
The poll found that just over 50% of surveyed Democrats said they would support an initiative to open NYC primaries to all voters. Just under 27% said they opposed, leaving nearly 23% who said they were “not sure.”
Shawn Griffiths
The poll also found that even if the primary system doesn’t change, 60% of registered Democrats believe the New York Democratic Party should allow independents to vote in the 2028 primary. Only 20% disagreed.
Even among self-described “proud Democrats” (who made up 40% of respondents), a majority said independents should be allowed to participate in the 2028 Democratic primary.
“New York independents have been forced into a box: give up their independence or give up their voice,” Opdycke said. “This is not a choice — it’s a disenfranchisement. And even Democrats want it to end.”
A new CRC has been formed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Open Primaries plans to attend an upcoming commission hearing in Staten Island on June 23. It will enter the findings of the poll into the public record, including:
- Only 40% of registered Democrats in NYC call themselves “proud party members.”
- A “statistically equal” 39% say they are really independents, but are registered with the party just so they can vote in primaries.
- Among Latino Democrats, specifically, only 1-in-3 (33%) actually consider themselves Democrats. This is the lowest share of any racial or ethnic group surveyed.
- 60% of NYC Democrats believe the party should allow independents to vote in the 2028 primary—only 20% disagree.
- A majority of self-described “proud Democrats” say independents should be able to vote in the 2028 Democratic primary.
The date is notable and symbolic since June 23 is primary election day in New York. In order to participate, voters would have had to register or re-register with a private political party by June 13.
This is the condition both the state and city put on an individual’s right to vote. However, the more data that comes to light about what disenfranchisement means under closed primaries, the more voters—even party members—demand change.
A majority support opening the process. A larger majority support allowing independents into the 2028 Democratic primary. And several Democrats say their party registration is less an expression of partisan loyalty than a workaround for exclusion. That is a serious problem for a system built on the assumption that party registration equals party identity.
The question now is whether city leaders will keep defending a system that even many Democrats are no longer willing to defend.
Methodology
The poll was conducted by IVC Media from June 11–12, 2026, through an MMS-to-web survey of 1,394 New York City registered Democrats who voted in at least one of the 2024 or 2025 general elections. Results were weighted to the L2 voter-file population by race, gender, and age. The margin of error is ±3.1 percentage points at a 95% confidence level.
IVC had made its research crosstabs available for members of the media upon request.