The Zohran Coalition

Mamdani's Mandate & The Dawn of a New Day

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“As we close our eyes, the days of countless others will only be beginning. Doors in Jackson Heights and Parkchester and Bay Ridge will open at midnight. New Yorkers will leave their homes and commute under streetlights to work, where they’ll drive buses and mop floors and bake bread. For some, this will feel like any other night. But for so many more, thanks to all of you, it will feel like the dawn of a new day.”

When the polls closed on Tuesday night, and Zohran Mamdani led Andrew Cuomo by seven percent across New York City, enough of a margin for the former Governor to concede the race, that new day had arrived.

Many of those whose doors “open at midnight” had voted for Mamdani, the man who relentlessly campaigned on the costs-of-living crisis. On Election Night, Mamdani swept the immigrant polyglot of Jackson Heights, the African and Bangladeshi enclave of Parkchester, and the increasingly diverse Bay Ridge; the three middle and working-class neighborhoods he had invoked in his speech.

I was very fortunate to write about the breadth of The Zohran Coalition for The New York Times — “The Anatomy of Mamdani’s Earthquake” — which included an excellent graphical component of the vote distribution.

However, I would be remiss to not share even more here — where it all began.

“Mr. Cuomo’s core coalition bookended the ends of the economic spectrum (the wealthy and the poor), Mr. Mamdani’s coalition was the in-between (working, middle, and upper-middle-class renters spanning white, Hispanic and Asian neighborhoods). Rooted in ideology, age and a relentless cost-of-living message, Mr. Mamdani’s unique campaign outperformed expectations across the five-borough mosaic.”

(The New York Times)

According to precinct data reviewed by The New York Times, Mamdani won “middle income residents,” those whose incomes are between fifty and one-hundred thousand dollars per year, by ten-percent; while winning majority-renter precincts by fourteen percent. Of the demographic data sorted by the Paper of Record, renters (70%) and those with “middle-incomes” (49%) were the two largest segments of the Democratic Primary electorate.

The first step of Mamdani’s successful campaign was rallying his base, namely young people from all race and class backgrounds. Across the Commie Corridor, the neighborhoods where Millennial and Gen-Z renters makeup an growing percentage of the electorate, voter turnout increased dramatically compared to four years ago. Over the course of several months, Zohran Mamdani worked to expand the electorate; combining moment-meeting, ubiquitous comms (macro) with an unprecedented ground game (field). On Tuesday, turnout increased by between twenty and foty-five percent, and Mamdani went on to annihilate Cuomo in: Ridgewood (+69), Bushwick (+66), East Williamsburg (+66), Greenpoint (+57), Astoria (+52), Greenwood Heights (+42), Fort Greene (+37). Mamdani and Comptroller Brad Lander, who cross-endorsed one another, tag-teamed Cuomo in several of the Brownstone Brooklyn neighborhoods west of Prospect Park (Park Slope, Windsor Terrace, Carroll Gardens). In the 44th (36K votes) and 52nd (41.5K votes) Assembly Districts, the most vote-rich areas of New York City, Cuomo earned a paltry 14.5% and 16.6% of the vote, respectively. In fact, Cuomo lost more ground to Mamdani in those two Assembly Districts (minus 26K votes), than he gained by winning the Bronx and Staten Island (plus 21K votes). “A thorough ass kicking,” was how a colleague described the carnage. Across left-liberal and progressive neighborhoods, the Mamdani campaign’s flesh-pressing (local) combined with Trump 2.0 dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party establishment (national), spurred a record number of voters to the polls in said “No Kings” neighborhoods. There, voters found Andrew Cuomo on their ballots, who so neatly embodied the status quo they had come to revile.

Mamdani won Queens County, historically the bellwether of the New York City Mayoral race (the trend continues!), because of pronounced support from Asian voters. He won the working-class Chinatown of Elmhurst (+21), the ethnic and immigrant polyglot of Jackson Heights (+26), Indo-Caribbean and Punjabi Richmond Hill (+10), the diverse middle-class battleground of Briarwood (+17), and “Little Bangladesh” in Jamaica Hills (+53). Mamdani also did well in mixed-race Hispanic and Asian neighborhoods, such as working-class Woodhaven (+9), majority homeowner Ozone Park (+29), and the industrial waterfront of College Point (+8). In both middle-class Rego Park (historically Jewish, growing Asian and Hispanic population) and low-income Flushing, Mamdani eked out narrow pluralities versus Cuomo.

Mamdani pointed to Bernie Sanders’ forty-two percent on Staten Island in the 2016 Democratic Primary as proof that an economic populist could resonate anywhere. Ironically, Mamdani may have undersold the potential for said inroads, given he came within nine percent of Cuomo on The Forgotten Borough, a massive no-show for the frontrunner. As I wrote in The New York Times, Mamdani “performed best along the racially mixed North Shore and in union-dense, home-owning precincts [along the eastern shore].” On the southern shore, Mamdani even won a couple blocks in Tottenville, a suburban (mostly Italian) neighborhood of civil servants that gave 83% of their votes to Donald Trump last November. In Southern Brooklyn, Mamdani swept Bensonhurst (+9) and Bath Beach (+5), enclaves with growing Chinese and declining Italian populations, despite the local political machine (one of few remaining with genuine influence) working on Cuomo’s behalf. In Brighton Beach, well-known for their Ukrainian and Russian population, Mamdani won almost exclusively off the newfound strength of the previously dormant local Muslim voting bloc. Both of these immigrant enclaves — Muslims incensed by the War in Gaza, Chinese-Americans concerned about quality of life — experienced significant movement towards the GOP over the past four years. In the Bronx, the first South Asian and Muslim candidate for Mayor rode the Bangladeshi vote (over 90% of Bangladeshis are Muslim) to victory in Westchester Square (+37) and Norwood (+8). Furthermore, many of the AOC—Trump voter precincts in Corona and Parkchester, first reported in this newsletter, voted for Mamdani in the Democratic Primary. In that spirit, I’ll make one more prediction: Zohran Mamdani will do well in most (if not all) of the Hispanic and Asian neighborhoods where Kamala Harris hemorrhaged support in 2024 — which will stun the national media class.

Zohran Mamdani made noticeable inroads with working and middle-class Hispanic and Black renters in gentrifying neighborhoods (particularly among Gen-X women). Were Mamdani’s appeal confined to the urban professional class, he would not have swept almost every precinct in Bed-Stuy, Bushwick, and Hamilton Heights. Andrew Cuomo, once predicted to have a considerable advantage amongst working-class voters of all ages and races, was reduced to a coalition heavily reliant upon a decreasing number of Black seniors.

In Ebbets Field apartments in Crown Heights, a supermajority-Black rent-stabilized development, Mamdani came within two-percent of Cuomo; four years ago, Eric Adams won this working-class development by a margin of forty-five percent. In Harlem, Mamdani easily won Dunbar apartments, the first large cooperative built for African Americans. Across Brooklyn and Upper Manhattan, that story was told hundreds of times over. Neighborhoods and Assembly Districts, comfortably won by Eric Adams four years ago, were overwhelmingly backing Zohran Mamdani. The democratic socialist ran up-the-score even in the less gentrified parts of said neighborhoods, comfortably winning Ocean Hill-Brownsville, Sunset Park, and the industrial blocks of Bushwick adjacent to Evergreen Cemetery; evidence that Mamdani’s coalition was one of age and class, not necessarily race. Across Bedford-Stuyvesant and Bushwick, Andrew Cuomo only won public housing developments and senior housing.

As I have repeated ad nauseam and will echo once again, Mamdani’s deficit with Black voters (Co-op City Cuomo+46; Cambria Heights Cuomo+42; East Flatbush Cuomo+37), compared to his advantage with Hispanic and Asian voters, is a tale of age, and to a lesser extent homeownership. New York City’s Asian and Hispanic populations are comparably younger to the Black population. In fact, many of Cuomo’s best performing neighborhoods, like Manhattan’s Upper East and Upper West Side, are among the oldest segments of the white electorate. Within them, Cuomo was strongest in the wealthiest precincts — Fifth Avenue, Central Park West, Riverside Drive, Park Avenue. Bookending the economic spectrum, Cuomo won voters making less than $50K; performing best in public housing developments across the city and other low-income communities, like Morrisania in the Bronx. Orthodox (Midwood), Hasidic (Borough Park), and Sephardic Jews (Ocean Parkway) gave Cuomo his largest percentage of the vote; the only segment of the frontrunner’s base whose voter turnout increased compared to four years prior. Despite a prohibitive polling lead for the vast majority of the campaign, much of Cuomo’s support beyond these handful of core constituencies eventually defected from the polarizing frontrunner once they came to better know Zohran Mamdani (through television advertisements, viral videos, and debates). On the contrary, as was the case with Robert Moses (and Cuomo’s own ill-fated 2002 run for Governor), the more people who saw Andrew Cuomo, the less they liked him. No wonder he was hiding.

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In totality, the result was nothing short of a mandate. Zohran Mamdani has already won more first place votes (432K) than Eric Adams won total votes (404K) through all rounds of ranked-choice-voting. The democratic socialist from Astoria won 170K more votes than Bill de Blasio’s 2013 landslide, while narrowly edging Ed Koch’s 431K from the 1977 runoff. All told, Mamdani will have a chance to surpass David Dinkins’ 1989 record of 547K votes in a Democratic Primary, depending upon the ranked-choice-voting simulation.

Regardless, the commanding victory of the Democratic nominee has made waves across the United States. Plans for Andrew Cuomo to vigorously contest the General Election have come to an abrupt halt after a devastatingly poor performance. Mayor Eric Adams, whose career was left for dead following an alleged quid pro quo with the Trump administration, has been receiving a second-look from financial elites put off by Cuomo’s meltdown. Billionaire Bill Ackman (a megadonor to both Trump and Cuomo’s Super PAC), outraged by Mamdani’s victory, but stymied by local election law, publicly offered to astroturf a write-in campaign. Curtis Sliwa, the red beret-wearing founder of the Guardian Angels, said the only way he would relinquish the Republican ballot line would be if “[they] figure out a way to put me in a pine box and bury me six feet under.” Nonetheless, the math behind the General Election, even with another avalanche of outside spending, does not favor the split and dysfunctional anti-Mamdani coalition.

But well beyond the insider machinations, Mamdani will be well positioned entering November. More than anything, that will be due to the soft power of his voter coalition. As the Democratic nominee who just ended a political dynasty, he will be inoculated from the establishment’s worst instincts due to the vastness of his victory. Hey, I saw you haven’t endorsed me yet… Did you see I won two-thirds of the vote in your district? Instead of winning over the political institutions of yore, Mamdani built his own — a canvassing army of fifty-thousand — that proved far more impactful, while mutually strengthening others, like NYC-DSA and the Working Families Party. Now, many of the institutions that opposed his bid will inevitably bend the knee, terrified they will be shut out of City Hall. All of this is a consequence of the unprecedented multi-racial coalition that crowned Mamdani on Tuesday. Taken for granted by the political establishment, deeply dissatisfied with the status quo, Mamdani reached these voters in a way no one else had before, not only earning their trust, but inspiring them to knock down the house.

Now, Zohran Mamdani will be the next Mayor of New York City.

“Mr. Mamdani’s coalition — the unlikely voters and the energized young people of New York City — is not only here to stay, but growing by the day.”

(Michael Lange in The New York Times)

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