University of Kwazulu-Natal

The Nyc Demographic Trends That Shaped Mamdani S Win

Bonisiwe Shabane
-
the nyc 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... 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. 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.

More than half of the more than 2 million New Yorkers who voted in this month’s mayoral race were younger than 55, with a significant share of them Millennials and Gen Zers — a... Mamdani’s affordability agenda, which propelled him to a 10-point victory over independent candidate Andrew Cuomo in Tuesday’s election, held particular resonance with young New Yorkers anxious about an increasingly expensive city. A Daily News analysis of voter demographics data highlights just how successful the 34-year-old Queens Assemblyman appears to have been in reaching the younger generations. According to the data, around 1.16 million New Yorkers under 55 voted in the Nov. 4 contest, making up almost 58% of the more than 2 million who cast ballots overall in what marked the city’s highest turnout mayoral race since the 1960s. By contrast, just shy of 850,000 of Nov.

4 voters were older than 55, the data shows. Those between 18 and 44, who make up the youngest Gen Z and Millennial generations, had an especially outsized impact this year, with about 855,000 — or roughly 42% — of all voters hailing... 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.

When Zohran Mamdani won the 2025 New York City mayoral race, it wasn’t just a political upset — it was a reconfiguration of the cit… The 2025 mayoral victory of Zohran Kwame Mamdani in New York City represents more than a political upset — it signals a sociological transformation in the structure of urban democracy. His success as a young, progressive, and Muslim candidate of Indian-Ugandan origin reveals how shifting demographics, economic pressures, identity politics, and generational realignments are redefining the contours of city politics. In a city long considered a laboratory of global diversity and economic inequality, Mamdani’s campaign marks a key moment in the sociology of modern urban life. His movement-based politics bridges grassroots mobilisation with digital activism, challenging traditional notions of power, governance, and belonging. This article examines the social dynamics, class factors, and ideological forces that shaped this unprecedented political development, and explores what it tells us about urban sociology in the 21st century.

When Zohran Mamdani entered the 2025 mayoral race, few predicted his eventual victory. Initially polling in the low teens, his campaign soon transformed into a vibrant city-wide movement. Within months, he overtook establishment figures, including former Governor Andrew Cuomo, by mobilising voters who felt unseen by mainstream politics. The key to Mamdani’s rise was his intersectional coalition — uniting young renters, immigrant workers, climate activists, and students under a common banner of affordability and justice. His team built relationships across class, ethnic, and neighbourhood lines, connecting diverse communities through shared material concerns: housing costs, public transit, and healthcare access. This cross-class mobilisation demonstrates what sociologists term “bridging social capital” — the ability to link heterogeneous groups through shared goals rather than identity alone.

In contrast to traditional machine politics based on ethnicity or patronage, Mamdani’s base was ideological and participatory — an urban mosaic stitched together by economic anxiety and hope.

People Also Search

Authors: Alberto Medina, Sara Suzuki, Ruby Belle Booth Note: This

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 thr...

According To CIRCLE Estimates, Also Based On Exit Polls Conducted

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 ar...

Since June’s Democratic Primary, Polls, Including One Published By The

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 o...

He Almost Doubled His Support Among Black Voters From 8

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 ...

You May Remember Maya Wiley, Left-wing New Yorkers’ Standard-bearer Four

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 & Hispani...