Mamdani, a blip or the future?

Did the people working at Kabab King have any opinions on the election? The Finns asked one of the unimpressed staff members but were left with little to chew on. You could tell from the cook’s face that it wasn’t the first time he’d been asked to wade into local politics.

That’s the power of Mamdani for you. Back in October last year, the first poll of the Democratic primary didn’t even rank the 34-year-old Assembly member as a possible option. Seven months later, he won the nomination by a landslide. On November 4, he became one of the youngest mayors in the Big Apple’s history, having won just over 50% of the vote.

The world’s media descended on the city to cover the race, and to try to understand the candidate’s pull on New Yorkers. As his own website states, over 100,000 people ended up volunteering to campaign for him. I accompanied a handful of them around Brooklyn at the end of October, and found myself surrounded by people who’d never canvassed before.

The election was days away, every poll looked like Andrew Cuomo, Mamdani’s main foe, didn’t have a chance in hell, but still they’d turned up, keen to do their bit, and get their guy over the line. As we got briefed in the street, people walked past and smiled at us. One mum stopped and made sure her kid had seen us, and knew we were campaigning for the mayor.

The script handed to the volunteers was straightforward: if you vote for Zohran, he’ll make buses fast and free, extend free childcare, open city-run grocery stores, and keep rents low for at least 2 million renters. All of this will be done by, among other things, ruthlessly taxing the rich.

Though we were in a safely Democratic neighbourhood, the sheer enthusiasm on display still felt surprising. Sure, these were people who were going to vote for Mamdani like they’d probably voted for Democrats Eric Adams and Bill de Blasio before that, but nearly half of them thanking the volunteers for volunteering? That felt new.

He really wasn’t the candidate the Democratic establishment had hoped for – surely he was too young, too Muslim, too pro-Palestine, too unapologetic about his opinions? – but somehow it worked. Gradually, he made himself unavoidable both in the city and online, where his posts and videos just wouldn’t stop going viral. Anything he touched or mentioned turned to gold. Hell, anything even vaguely related to him turned to gold, as I found in a drizzly parking lot the night before the big day.

I’d turned up by myself and could tell the guy next to me was there for the same reason as me. I got talking to him, found he was called Oli, was 31 years old, and had cancelled a climbing session to be here, in north Brooklyn. Together we waited for the artist Kristine Michelsen-Correa, creator of an unofficial Mamdani campaign merch project, to arrive, and start offloading her precious cargo.

“I think he’s the first candidate who, since I’ve been alive, is actually representing a lot of my ideals”, Oli told me as we sheltered from the rain. “He actually reflects what it means to be a New Yorker”. After around 20 minutes, we got what we came for: $15 caps that said “Zohran” in that pointy, dramatic font you mostly see on posters for death metal bands. 

“How did you guys hear about us?”, Michelsen-Correa asked. Everyone in the queue replied one by one and she just found it incredible that word-of-mouth could work that well. I’d personally seen the hat on someone in the street, as had several others.

From there, we’d tracked down the Instagram account, and duly waited for it to post more information about the next “hat drop”. Finally managing to track her down had felt like winning a competition, especially as she refused to sell her merch online. All of this for a silly cap made by a random supporter!

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Mamdani shows a different way is possible

James Ball

This may be what those outside of New York missed during the race. It was easy to see and hear from the irate billionaires and the Democrat bigwigs getting cold feet, but what happened on the ground often stayed there. Unless you actually could walk down the street in the city, how would you have spotted the “Cats for Zohran” posters taped to windows, or the “Hot Moms for Mamdani” t-shirts worn by, well, hot mums? 

Still, there is a billion-dollar question here, and it isn’t quite “how did he do it?” but, instead: can anyone else do it like he did? There is no doubt that Mamdani is a uniquely talented politician, but New York is New York, and not every Democratic candidate can handily run against both a kooky Republican and a disgraced former governor. A one-off can’t, by definition, be treated as a blueprint.

This is why many strategists kept a closer eye on the race unfolding in New Jersey instead, just on the other side of the Hudson river. Over in the Garden State it looked until the last moment, like a toss-up whether Democrat Mikie Sherrill or Republican Jack Ciattarelli would become the state’s governor. Nearly all the polls fell squarely within the margin of error.

Though New Jersey can often be thought of as solid blue Democrat, the reality is a bit more complicated. A dense and heterogenous state, its more Hispanic counties swung quite heavily against Kamala Harris last year. Back in 2021, during the last gubernatorial race, Ciattarelli lost, but only by a few points.

The state may not have the glitz and glamour of its coastal neighbour, but what happens there is usually worth picking apart. That was Ashley Koning’s argument when I met her in Morristown, an hour or so away from NYC. The director of The Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling, she told me that “New York City has a very unique geography and electorate, whereas New Jersey is much more representative of the nation as a whole.

“This race not only has statewide implications, but huge national implications because it will inevitably set up the roadmaps for each of these parties going forward  into the midterms. Whatever happens with Sherrill will be taken as more of a lesson for the national stage than with Mamdani.”

At the time, the two candidates were neck-and-neck, and Ciattarelli was trying to skate on the thinnest of ices. A moderate Republican by nature, he eventually hopped on the Trump train, even welcoming a formal endorsement from the president. Still, he knew that his state favoured the centre, and tried to avoid his party’s most strident talking points.

Sherrill, on the other hand, made the most of her past as a Navy pilot. No, really, she did: even the posters supporters put on their front lawns featured the outline of a helicopter inside one of the R’s in her name. Oh, and she had one more weapon in her arsenal.

“Trump has loomed over this entire race to New Jersey, and she has made sure of that in all of her attack ads and in all of her criticisms of Cittarelli”, Koning added. Ciatterelli tried to only mention POTUS when it suited him, but she worked hard to link the two men in the minds of the electorate. Clearly, it worked: after weeks of what looked like dead heat, Sherrill ended up winning with over 55% of the vote. 

She also managed to bring back in to the fold many of the Hispanic voters who’d been flirting with Trump. Take Passaic County, whose move towards the GOP shocked everyone last November.

On election night, its voters – 43% of them Latino – moved a whopping 18% to the left. Were reports of the death of the Democrats’ traditional voting coalition perhaps a tad exaggerated after all?

After a year spent feeling powerless in DC and agonising over what to do next, the party can now afford to take a breath, and allow itself to look forward to the midterms. Perhaps most importantly, it can also remind itself that its diversity is its strength. Of course, choosing the next presidential candidate will be tough, but we aren’t there yet and, for now, there is no need to settle on one single direction of travel.

Consultants and commentators are paid to endlessly pit the left against the centre, the old hands against the new wave, Mamdani against Sherrill, the moderates against the woke, but complex questions do not need to have a single answer. What worked in New Jersey wouldn’t have worked in Virginia, where the party also won big this week. Someone like Mamdani, magnetic as he is, probably would have struggled to gain a foothold in the state next door. Today, the question is: who cares?

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Zohran Mamdani and the coming battle for New York

Ivan L Nagy

Dozens of deliriously happy twenty-something hipsters chanted Zohran’s name like a mantra in one of Bushwick’s many achingly cool bars on November 4, and for now that’s enough. Some of them didn’t understand what projections were and others struggled with the idea that elections can be reliably called even before every single vote has been counted. That ought to be taken as a positive.

Without Mamdani, none of these kids would have spent their evening following a livestream about local politics. Watching their excitement rise as the night went on was a delight, especially after the slow, unfolding horror of America’s last election night.

2025 wasn’t a year of many races but, wherever it was allowed to, the Democratic Party managed to show that it could fight back and both attract and retain disparate electorates across the country. Its new faces may not have all that much in common as people and politicians, but the fact that they’re all winners should, for the time being, be all that matters.

A new dawn hasn’t quite risen yet in America, but things have already stopped feeling as dark as they did a year ago. Isn’t that worth celebrating?