The city’s affordability crisis has dominated the election cycle, with Mamdani campaigning on his plans to make life easier for cash-strapped New Yorkers. About half of the metro’s renters spend more than 30% of their income on housing, the threshold that experts define as the outer limit of affordability.

Hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers poured out to the polls Tuesday to vote in a series of local elections — including the most consequential mayoral race in decades — and turnout appeared poised to ...