Understanding How Proportional Representation Might Work in New York City

New simulations show what New York City elections could look like under proportional representation.

NEW YORK, NY — In 2025 Republicans and conservatives won nearly 22% of the New York City Council vote yet walked away with fewer than 10% of seats. Under the city's single-seat electoral rules, parties whose votes are dispersed across many districts often end up with far fewer seats than their vote share would suggest. What might the New York City Council look like if the rules were designed to fix that? 

A new report by Manhattan Institute adjunct fellow Jack Santucci and legal policy fellow and director of Cities John Ketcham takes seriously that question. Using the actual results of the 2025 City Council elections, they simulate two proportional systems: one that uses boroughs as multi-seat districts, and one that adds a layer of citywide seats on top of the existing map. In both cases, nearly all the same individuals are elected, but each party's seat share comes much closer to reflecting how the city actually voted. 

Key findings include: 

• New York City's elections are 1.7x more fragmented than a typical U.S. House election, with a party-system size of 3.3 compared to roughly two nationwide.
• Under a simulated open-list system using boroughs as multi-seat districts, 47 out of the 51 current winners are still elected, with additional seats going to underrepresented groupings. 
• Under a simulated mixed-member system with 20 citywide compensation seats, all 51 current winners would be elected, with each party's seat share coming within one or two percentage points of its vote share. 

Although proportional representation is often criticized for fragmenting party systems, New York City's three-way political divide—with a socialist-leaning Democratic Working Families left, a mainstream institutional Democratic center, and a Republican and conservative right all vying for representation in city government—make the traditional argument against proportional representation hard to sustain. 

Click here to read the full report.