1990 New York gubernatorial election
The 1990 New York gubernatorial election was held on November 6, 1990 to elect the Governor and Lieutenant Governor of New York. The Incumbent governor Mario Cuomo won a third term, made him become the first Democratic governor elected three times since Herbert H. Lehman. While the Republican Party and Conservative Party had run the same candidate by taking advantage of New York's fusion voting laws in every gubernatorial election since 1974, in the 1990 election the Republicans nominated Pierre A. Rinfret while the Conservatives nominated Herbert London. In the General Election, Rinfret came in second over London by just 38,334 votes. Had London received more votes, the Conservative Party would have secured Line B on all ballots in New York through the 1994 New York gubernatorial election. Per the New York State Constitution, the Conservative Party would have taken over privileges reserved for the two parties obtaining the most votes in the most recent gubernatorial election, including authority over state and county Boards of Elections. Since this election, the closest a minor party has come to taking over Line B with a candidate of its own was in 2002, when Tom Golisano, running on the Independence Party line, received 14.28% of the vote behind Carl McCall's 31.50% on the Democratic line, a difference of 17.22%. The closest a single candidate has been on two different lines using fusion voting since the 1990 election was in 2006. In that election, John Faso received 23.54% on the Republican line and 3.59% on the Conservative line, a difference of 19.95%.
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
County results | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Elections in New York State |
---|
Results
Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Democratic | Mario Cuomo | 2,086,070 | 51.42% | ||
Liberal | Mario Cuomo | 71,017 | 1.75% | ||
Total | Mario Cuomo | 2,157,087 | 53.17% | -11.46% | |
Republican | Pierre A. Rinfret | 865,948 | 21.35% | -10.42% | |
Conservative | Herbert London | 827,614 | 20.40% | +16.85% | |
Right to Life | Louis P. Wein | 137,804 | 3.40% | +0.35% | |
New Alliance | Lenora Fulani | 31,089 | 0.77% | +0.21% | |
Libertarian | W. Gary Johnson | 24,611 | 0.61% | N/A | |
Socialist Workers | Craig Gannon | 12,743 | 0.31% | N/A | |
Majority | 1,291,139 | 31.83% | -1.03% | ||
Turnout | 4,056,896 | ||||
Democratic hold |