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      How Zohran Mamdani Brought New Voters to the Polls

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      Mr. Mamdani, the likely winner of the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City, drew tens of thousands of new voters to the polls. Here’s how.Upstart challengers in political races often begin with the goal of drawing new or disillusioned voters to their cause. They build excitement, often on social media, but inevitably fall short.Zohran Mamdani proved different.He hit the ground running in the mayor’s race, talking to disaffected New Yorkers in Queens and the Bronx who voted for President Trump. He repeatedly visited mosques to hear the concerns of Muslims, hoping to provide a reason for the uninvolved to register to vote.He won over progressives with a populist message of making the city more affordable, in part by asking corporations and the wealthy to pay more, and he spread his vision through viral social media videos. He accumulated an army of volunteers and small donors, helping his campaign knock on more than one million doors.The polls were slow to capture his momentum, but he was building something the city had not really seen before: a winning citywide campaign for mayor, built from nothing in a matter of months.Mr. Mamdani, the likely Democratic primary winner, still faces what is expected to be another bruising general election in November with a broader electorate. His ability to sustain his momentum will be tested, especially with business leaders already plotting how to undermine him.He will need to further the success he found in immigrant neighborhoods like Kensington in Brooklyn, which is known as Little Bangladesh, and in the enclaves of young professionals, like Long Island City in Queens.New registrations were much higher in 2025Cumulative new registrations beginning 100 days before the registration deadline

      Sources: New York City Board of Elections; L2By The New York TimesAge distribution of voters in New York City mayoral electionsIncludes 2025 mail ballots processed through Thursday morning

      Sources: New York City Board of Elections; L2By The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Free Buses and Child Care. A Rent Freeze. Can Zohran Mamdani Achieve His Plans?

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      The Democratic mayoral hopeful promises free child care, a $30 minimum wage and a massive tax hike on the city’s corporations. But much is not within a mayor’s control.Zohran Mamdani’s rapid rise from upstart mayoral hopeful to likely winner of the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City was propelled by the simple message that the city was too expensive — and that he had plans that would fix it.Mr. Mamdani’s singular focus on the city’s affordability crisis resonated, especially with young voters. They embraced his populist promises to make bus service free, freeze rents on stabilized apartments, build city-owned grocery stores and offer free early child care.But whether his campaign promises can become reality is an open question — and important parts of Mr. Mamdani’s platform are not solely in a mayor’s control.While some of his left-leaning policy ideas are not entirely new — rents have been frozen before, for example — others would represent a dramatic reimagining of city government.And much of Mr. Mamdani’s agenda relies in large measure on increasing revenue through taxes on businesses and the wealthy — part of an overarching vision to rethink how the city funds expanded social programs. Along with raising income taxes, he has pledged to shift the property tax burden “from the outer boroughs to more expensive homes in richer and whiter neighborhoods,” according to his campaign website.Already, Mr. Mamdani’s plans, in line with his democratic socialist political affiliation, have prompted intense backlash from business leaders who say he poses a danger to New York’s economy. In private meetings, power brokers are discussing how to mount a strong challenge to Mr. Mamdani in the November general election.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Mamdani, Trump and the End of the Old Politics

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      Mamdani, Trump and the End of the Old PoliticsThe MSNBC anchor — and native New Yorker — Chris Hayes considers what Democrats can learn from the mayoral primary.This is an edited transcript of an episode of “The Ezra Klein Show.” You can listen to the conversation by following or subscribing to the show on the NYT Audio app, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.The Democratic primary that just wrapped up in New York was a collision between two very different candidates on almost every level: ideologically, outsider versus insider and name recognition. But it was also a collision that I think matters, for much beyond New York City politics, of two very different theories of attention.Andrew Cuomo ran a campaign that was based on a tried-and-true strategy of buying attention. He had this gigantic super PAC with tens of millions of dollars purchasing all the advertising money can buy, absolutely dominating airwaves with negative ads about Zohran Mamdani.Archived clip: In his own words, Zohran Mamdani wants to defund the police.Archived clip: Zohran Mamdani is a 33-year-old dangerously inexperienced legislator who has passed just three bills.Archived clip: Zohran Mamdani, a risk New York can’t afford.And then you had Mamdani, who was running a campaign on a very different theory of attention, a theory of viral attention, a campaign built on these vertical videos that, if you opened Instagram, if you opened TikTok, and you were in any way connected to his ideas or to New York City, this was all you saw.Archived clip of Kareem Rahma: So what’s your take?Zohran Mamdani: That I should be the mayor.Archived clip of Mamdani: New York is suffering from a crisis, and it’s called halalflation.Archived clip of Mamdani: Did you know that Andrew Cuomo gutted the pensions for hundreds and thousands of New Yorkers?Archived clip of Mamdani: Mr. Cuomo, and furthermore, the name is Mamdani. M-A-M-D-A-N-I. You should learn how to say it.”Attention works differently now. This is one of the core political theses of this entire podcast. It is laced through so many of these episodes.You just watched these two incredibly different attentional strategies collide. Cuomo got flattened. He got flattened. It was not close.There are things you cannot learn about how to win elections in other places from an off-year June Democratic primary in New York City using rank-choice voting.But there are things you can learn about how attention works right now — and that’s in a large part the subject of this conversation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why a Bill Nobody Loves Feels Inevitable

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      President Trump’s megabill makes many Republicans uncomfortable, but that probably won’t stop it from becoming law.The path for the One Big Beautiful Bill, as President Trump calls his signature domestic legislation, has not been linear.The bill, which would extend the 2017 tax cuts and cut into the social safety net to pay for it, barely passed the House. It was heavily rewritten in the Senate. In recent days, various provisions have been rejected by a key Senate official whose job is to make sure that lawmakers color inside the lines of such budget bills, leaving senators scrambling to add back in what they can.Then there’s the fact that, as my colleagues Carl Hulse and Catie Edmondson wrote today, nobody really loves the bill. But this is Trump’s Washington. And trifling matters like not knowing quite what’s going to be in the bill — and not particularly liking it — will probably not stop Senate Republicans from voting for it, potentially as soon as this weekend.I asked Catie, who has covered every twist and turn of this bill’s winding path, to explain how it became a policy grab bag, why it makes so many Republicans uncomfortable — and why none of that probably matters when it comes to its chances of becoming law.As we speak, Republicans are scrambling to save various provisions that the Senate parliamentarian believes run afoul of the rules governing budget bills. You’ve covered Congress since the first Trump administration, and you have seen a lot of sausage-making in that time. Is it always, uh, like this? We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Supreme Court Punts Decision on Louisiana Voting Map Until Next Term

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      The justices asked that the case, which has implications for the political power of Black voters, be reargued next term.The Supreme Court declined on Friday to weigh in on Louisiana’s contested congressional voting map, instead ordering that new arguments be scheduled during its next term.There was no explanation offered for why the justices did not make a decision or set a date for new arguments. All but one paragraph in the six-page order was written by Justice Clarence Thomas, the lone dissent.Justice Thomas wrote that it was the court’s duty to hear such congressional redistricting challenges and that the justices had “an obligation to resolve such challenges promptly.”It is the latest twist in a winding legal battle over whether Louisiana drew congressional districts that fairly empower all voters after the 2020 census. The case has been closely watched, given that a decision striking down Louisiana’s map could affect the balance of power in the narrowly divided House of Representatives.For now, the state’s latest map, which the State Legislature approved in January 2024, will remain in place. That map paved the way for a second Black Democrat, Cleo Fields, to join Representative Troy Carter, a New Orleans-area Democrat, in the state’s congressional delegation. It was the first time in decades that Louisiana had elected two Black members of Congress, and allowed Democrats to pick up a second seat in the state.One-third of the state’s population is Black.“Although we hoped for a decision this term, we welcome a further opportunity to present argument to the court regarding the states’ impossible task of complying with the court’s voting precedents,” Liz Murrill, the Louisiana attorney general, said in a statement shared on social media.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Have Millennials Finally Figured Out How to Topple Boomer Bosses?

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      It was a night when thousands of 20-somethings were glued to their laptop screens for a battle whose stakes were both immediate and metaphorical, a contest between experience and youth, veteran versus vitality. Mike Tyson, a decorated, tested legend of boxing, was taking on Jake Paul. Mr. Paul, decades younger and with fewer fights under his belt, radiated energy, but his reputation was based more on social media videos than prowess in the ring. The newcomer triumphed.Of course, in sports the advantages of being the scrappy, enthusiastic upstart in a fight with an old hand are obvious. There’s an energy that’s visible in quick leaps, fast punches, unflagging endurance. The same may be true in math, music or the arts. In politics, though, the fresh face is often written off. The median age of a U.S. senator is the age at which many American retire. The last two presidents were born before the invention of the transistor radio and the hula hoop.But some political contests force voters to laser in on whether all that grizzled experience is really what they want.New York’s Democratic mayoral primary on Tuesday was one of those. The competition between the two front-runners, Zohran Mamdani, 33, and former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, 67, played out not just on the plane of policy but also on the plane of experience versus enthusiasm: Did New Yorkers want a mayor who was relatively new to local politics, or someone whose record, scandals and all, was basically tattooed on the city’s brain? If New York is “a city for only the very young,” its politics don’t often seem so, shuffling well-known names around seats of power like musical chairs. What’s the value, some watching the mayor’s race wondered, in someone totally new?That question feels urgent on a national level, too, not long after a presidential campaign that featured a septuagenarian and an octogenarian, and weeks after the exodus of a lightning rod Zoomer from the Democratic National Committee.The dichotomy of wizened experience versus fresh-faced enthusiasm has played out many times in the business world, too — in corporate boardrooms, where silver-haired executives debated their firm’s succession; on startup teams, where founders scratched their heads over whether to bring in veterans or workers with fresh ideas.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Cuomo Doesn’t Blame Himself for Losing the Primary. Others Do.

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      Even some of his supporters say Andrew M. Cuomo ran an aloof campaign for mayor that underestimated his chief rival, Zohran Mamdani.For Andrew M. Cuomo, the rally rolling out a $20-an-hour minimum wage proposal was supposed to be a high point of his comeback campaign for mayor of New York City.It did not go particularly well. On the stage of a claustrophobic conference room in Midtown, the former governor flubbed two key lines, at one point promising to “combat affordability.” Many of the laborers paid by their unions to attend appeared uninterested, chatting in the back throughout the speech.And when it was over, Mr. Cuomo beelined to his waiting Dodge Charger, punched the gas past waiting reporters and made an illegal right-on-red turn.He made no further public appearances that day last month, even with Primary Day weeks away.Mr. Cuomo, who dominated New York for a decade as governor, entered the crowded field of Democrats back in March with the force of a steamroller and a commanding lead in the polls. He wore down the Democratic establishment until it lined up behind him, strong-armed unions and seeded a record-shattering super PAC that would eventually spend $25 million.But even some of his allies said that up close, the campaign sometimes looked more like a listing ship, steered by an aging candidate who never really seemed to want to be there and showed little interest in reacquainting himself with the city he hoped to lead.New Yorkers took note. And on Tuesday, a campaign that Mr. Cuomo, 67, had hoped would deliver retribution four years after his humiliating resignation as governor ended in another thumping rebuke instead. Voters preferred Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old state lawmaker whom Mr. Cuomo dismissed as woefully unqualified, by a comfortable margin.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Plenty of Jews Love Zohran Mamdani

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      In 2023, a branch of the Palestinian restaurant Ayat opened in Brooklyn’s Ditmas Park, not far from where I live. The eatery trumpets its politics; the seafood section on the menu is headed “From the River to the Sea,” which I found clever but some of its Jewish neighbors considered threatening. An uproar grew, especially online, so Ayat made a peace offering.In early 2024, it hosted a free Shabbat dinner, writing on social media, “Let’s create a space where differences unite us, where conversations flow freely, and where bonds are forged.” Over 1,300 people showed up. To serve them all, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported, Ayat used 15 lambs, 700 pounds of chicken and 100 branzino fish. There were also sandwiches from a glatt kosher caterer, a six-foot-long challah and a klezmer band.The event captured something miraculous about New York City, which is, for all its tensions and aggravations and occasional bursts of violence, a place where Jews and Muslims live in remarkable harmony. In Lawrence Wright’s recent novel set in the West Bank, “The Human Scale,” a Palestinian American man tries to explain it to his Palestinian cousin: “It’s not like here. Arabs and Jews are more like each other than they are like a lot of other Americans. You’ll see them in the same grocery stores and restaurants because of the halal food.”Eating side-by-side does not, of course, obviate fierce and sometimes ugly disagreements. But while outsiders like to paint New York as a roiling hellhole, there’s an everyday multicultural amity in this city that’s low-key magical.I saw some of that magic reflected in Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign, and especially in the Muslim candidate’s alliance with New York’s Jewish comptroller, Brad Lander. They cross-endorsed, urging their followers to list the other second in the city’s ranked-choice voting system. The two campaigned together and made a joint appearance on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” and Lander was beside Mamdani when he delivered his victory speech.Mamdani’s pro-Palestinian politics have sparked enormous alarm among some New York Jews, but he’s also won considerable Jewish support. In a poll of likely Jewish voters done by the Honan Strategy Group in May, Andrew Cuomo came in first, with 31 percent of the vote, but Mamdani was second, with 20 percent. On Tuesday, he won most of Park Slope, a neighborhood full of progressive Jews, and held his own on the similarly Jewish Upper West Side.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More