University of Kwazulu-Natal

The Demographic Trends That Shaped Mamdani S Win

Bonisiwe Shabane
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the demographic trends that shaped mamdani s win

Authors: Alberto Medina, Sara Suzuki, Ruby Belle Booth Note: This analysis was updated on November 12 to reflect changes in exit poll data. Notably, we adjusted our estimate of youth voter turnout in the New York City mayoral race from 19% to 28%. In one of their first major opportunities to shape the political landscape since the last presidential election, young voters played a major role in three key 2025 elections in New York, New Jersey, and... In New York City, young voters (ages 18-29) provided Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani overwhelming support toward his historic victory. According to exit polls, 75% of youth voted for Mamdani, compared to 19% for former New York governor Andrew Cuomo and 5% for Republican Curtis Sliwa.

Mamdani won the three-way race with 50% of the overall vote; young people were his strongest supporters out of all age groups. According to CIRCLE estimates, also based on exit polls conducted by SSRS and Census population data, 28% of young eligible voters cast ballots in the New York City mayoral election. This is an estimate based on 93% of votes counted as of early afternoon on November 12 and reflecting updated exit poll data on the share of votes cast by youth. The estimate may still shift slightly once all votes are counted. The racial demographics of his winning coalition resembled President Trump’s from 2024. On Tuesday, 34-year-old democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani won New York City’s mayoralty, defeating former governor Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa by about nine and 43 percentage points, respectively.

That outcome, more or less, was expected. Since June’s Democratic primary, polls, including one published by the Manhattan Institute last week, had predicted victory for the Queens assemblyman. The election held a more surprising result: the racial demographics of Mamdani’s winning coalition resembled President Trump’s from 2024. This was key to his success and the product of a deliberate strategy to engage New York’s ethnic communities on a granular basis. According to a New York Times analysis, Mamdani won majority-black precincts by 26 percentage points, majority Hispanic by 20 percentage points, and majority Asian by 4 percentage points. This performance marks a significant improvement compared with the primary, in which he won majority-Hispanic precincts by 8 percentage points and actually lost majority-black precincts to Cuomo by 16 percentage points.

Similarly, Trump owed his reelection last year in large part to historic gains among nonwhite Americans. He almost doubled his support among black voters from 8 percent in 2020 to 15 percent in 2024 and effectively matched Kamala Harris among Hispanic voters, losing by only 3 percentage points. I want to start by issuing a mea culpa for my previous take that Zohran Mamdani was extremely unlikely to win the 2025 NYC Mayoral Democratic primary. I still stand by my view that Mamdani was a priori a poor choice to rally behind if your main goal was beating Cuomo, and that strategy is still very important in RCV elections,... So how did Mamdani pull it off? He created something the left has talked about for decades but has rarely, if ever, actually achieved: a massive youth surge in turnout.

I’ll have more to write about regarding that youth turnout surge once the final voter file data is in, but for now here are four charts that show how Mamdani became the Democratic nominee... You may remember Maya Wiley, left-wing New Yorkers’ standard-bearer four years ago who got 21.4% of the vote and ultimately came third in RCV. As expected, the vast majority of her voters flowed to Mamdani this time around, but what’s impressive is how he got a higher share of than vote than her in almost every part of... You can particularly see his surge in support in the heavily Asian & Hispanic parts of Queens and Brooklyn — these are two groups Wiley did very poorly with yet Mamdani may well have... (Here’s a bonus map my colleague iabvek made showing the estimated race/ethnicity of 2021 Democratic primary voters, which may be helpful for interpreting the above map) Of note are the few areas where Mamdani only a little better than Wiley.

Most salient are the heavily Black areas, you can see these in South-East Brooklyn, South-East Queens and the North Bronx. This isn’t terribly surprising given that Wiley is Black and Mamdani is not. Additionally, Mamdani got the same tiny share of the vote that Mamdani did in ultra-Orthodox Jewish enclaves such as Borough Park and Williamsburg. Finally, though it’s geographically small and hard to see on the map, Mamdani did not run much ahead of Wiley in the very richest parts of the Upper East Side, near Central Park. This area is seriously old money and has a history of voting for more fiscally moderate candidates in local elections, so it’s no surprise they were possibly the most turned off by his socialist... Posted: Friday 12.26.2025 1:53 am The Arab American News Opinions, Other Voices, U.S.A

Analysts are still working to understand Zohran Mamdani’s decisive victory in last month’s New York mayoral race. Like the blind men in the old Indian story of the “Blind Men and the Elephant”, the explanations offered have been mostly accurate but incomplete. Mamdani’s focus on affordability was appealing, as was his compelling affability evident in clever and incisive social media posts. Being constantly on the move, meeting and engaging voters where they were, was also a factor in his favor. It communicated his authentic desire to know voters and have them know him. In our stale consultant-driven political environment, Mamdani was a breath of fresh air.

With his opponents spending tens of millions on negative attack ads, Mamdani’s approach was new and exciting. Despite running against the well-funded campaign of a former governor and much of the New York Democratic Party establishment that saw him as a threat to their hegemony, he not only prevailed but also... Three other factors were also decisive in shaping the outcome. New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani drew votes from a diverse coalition of voters in the nation’s largest city. His voter base took strong roots in Brooklyn neighborhoods chock-full of young, diverse people. These voters drove him to victory by coming out in droves.

Nevertheless, he credited mostly blue-collar working people. In his victory speech, he praised a number of diverse groups, including families and working people, whom he felt had been forgotten by the city. “We will fight for you because we are you,” he said. “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.” He also credited those with the characteristic scars of working people. “Fingers bruised from lifting boxes on the warehouse floor, palms calloused from delivery bike handlebars, knuckles scarred with kitchen burns … you have dared to reach for something greater,” he said. Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York City primary was “a powerful reminder that when young people are mobilized and energized, they can shape election outcomes,” said CIRCLE researcher Ruby Belle Booth. Photo: Shutterstock His campaign drew a surge of new voters, including young people.

Will the youth vote help shape the 2026 midterms, too? Last night, Zohran Mamdani defeated former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to win New York City’s Democratic mayoral election. The city’s young voting base is being credited with boosting Mamdani to victory in the primary and general elections. A new analysis by the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life highlights young people’s impact on the mayoral race. Over 1 in 4 youth voted in the 2025 New York City mayoral race—a high level of youth participation in a municipal election—and 75% of those young voters supported Mamdani.

The victory by the 34-year-old Mamdani and the hand that voters aged 18-29 had in it raise questions about general trends in that demographic. Does this primary say anything about future major elections and the role that youth will play?

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