University of Kwazulu-Natal

10 Reasons Zohran Mamdani S Victory Is A Big Deal And The Road Ahead

Bonisiwe Shabane
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10 reasons zohran mamdani s victory is a big deal and the road ahead

And then the election results started to roll in Tuesday night. More than 400,000 New Yorkers voted early and Zohran Mamdani led by 9 points. The Election Day surge of support for Andrew Cuomo never materialized. By night’s end, Mamdani was leading 43-36 with almost a million votes cast. When ranked choice votes are reallocated on Tuesday, his margin of victory will climb into the double digits. We featured Mamdani on our cover long before most people knew who he was (just as we did with AOC) and mapped out his path to victory in May when he was still trailing...

And now here we are. Mamdani’s victory is a shattering defeat for the Democratic Party establishment here in New York City and across the country. New horizons are opening up for the left – and for The Indypendent – that previously were closed. First, let’s count the ways this victory is a big deal. BEYOND AUSTERITY: For New Yorkers, it’s a chance to break with decades of austerity dating back to the fiscal crisis of the mid-1970s. Instead of catering primarily to Wall Street and Big Real Estate, we will have a city government whose guiding principle will be to take actions to make the lives of working class New Yorkers...

A data-driven look at the coalition, turnout, and affordability agenda that defeated a billionaire-backed machine and what it means for governing. Zohran Kwame Mamdani’s win in the New York City mayoral race marked a singular moment in municipal politics. The Associated Press called the race roughly half an hour after polls closed, and more than 2 million voters cast ballots, a level of participation not seen since 1969. In different tallies reported election night, Mamdani led by nine points with most votes counted and, in the final three-way breakdown, secured 50.4 percent to Andrew Cuomo’s 41.6 percent, with Curtis Sliwa just over... The state assemblymember from Queens will be the city’s first Muslim mayor and one of the few openly socialist politicians to lead the nation’s largest city. His campaign rose from 1 percent in early polls to a decisive victory built on a working-class ground game, a multilingual appeal, and a platform centered on affordability.

At his victory party in Brooklyn, Mamdani framed his mandate in stark class terms. “The working people of New York have been told by the wealthy and the well-connected that power does not belong in their hands,” he said. He continued with a description of who that power should serve: “Fingers bruised from lifting boxes on the warehouse floor; palms calloused from delivery bike handlebars; knuckles scarred with kitchen burns—these are not hands... And yet, over the last 12 months, you have dared to reach for something greater. Tonight, against all odds, we have grasped it…We have toppled a political dynasty.” The campaign’s promise was concrete and repeatedly distilled into a few repeatable commitments.

Leading a call and response, Mamdani told supporters, “Together, New York, we’re going to freeze the… [rent!] Together, New York, we’re going to make buses fast and… [free!]Together, New York, we’re going to deliver... “This is part of a lifelong struggle,” he told volunteers. “Not an electoral one. You have joined a movement for the rest of your life. Now, however you want to be a part of that movement is your decision, just as long as you continue to be a part of it.” Those lines captured how a campaign that began without media attention or establishment support became a mass operation.

The 11,000-member New York City Democratic Socialists of America served as the core of a turnout program that, according to campaign figures, marshalled 104,400 volunteers and knocked on 3 million doors. Outreach was multilingual and personal, from a get-out-the-vote video series in Arabic, Spanish, Urdu, and Hindi to speeches that named the workers the campaign aimed to represent. “I am young. I am Muslim. I am a democratic socialist. And most damning of all, I refuse to apologize for any of this,” Mamdani said in his victory speech.

He cast the coalition as a full reflection of the city’s working class: “Thank you to those so often forgotten by the politics of our city, who made this movement their own. I speak of Yemeni bodega owners and Mexican abuelas. Senegalese taxi drivers and Uzbek nurses. Trinidadian line cooks and Ethiopian aunties.” A democratic socialist wasn’t supposed to be able to win a major office like New York City mayor over the objections of billionaires. Yet Zohran Mamdani and the movement behind him built a campaign far stronger than the oligarchs and their unlimited money.

Jacobin‘s winter issue, “Municipal Socialism,” is out now. Follow this link to get a discounted subscription to our beautiful print quarterly. This wasn’t supposed to happen. When Zohran Mamdani launched his mayoral campaign in late October 2024, the candidate himself was probably the only person in the city who thought he could win. Donald Trump’s election two weeks later cemented the mainstream consensus that New York City and the nation were turning decisively rightward. Pivoting to the “moderate center,” we were told, was the Democratic Party’s only chance at electoral survival.

Even the most optimistic of Mamdani’s leftist supporters thought that the best-case scenario was a respectable loss in the mayoral primary. Tonight’s historic win proves the skeptics wrong. Despite millions of dollars poured into billionaire-bought attack ads and despite Trump’s attempts to blackmail voters into backing Andrew Cuomo, New Yorkers are sending a thirty-four-year-old democratic socialist to Gracie Mansion with a strong...

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