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      Zohran Mamdani’s Winning Style

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      In all the post-mortems that have appeared since Zohran Mamdani upset the political apple cart to potentially, if unofficially, clinch the Democratic nomination for New York mayor, one particular aspect of his appeal has been largely overlooked: not how Mr. Mamdani conducted his campaign but how he looked while conducting it.Put another way: Mr. Mamdani didn’t just record himself for his various social media platforms running into the freezing Atlantic on New Year’s Day to publicize his pledge to freeze rents; he recorded himself running into the freezing ocean not in a wet suit or a bathing suit, but in a suit and tie.Sure, it was funnier that way. But it was also tactical. For a 33-year-old progressive and democratic socialist trying to be the city’s first Muslim mayor, whose opponents are painting him as a “100 percent Communist lunatic” and a “radical leftie” (that from President Trump on Truth Social), not to mention trying to other him because of his racial and religious identity, dressing like an establishment guy offers a counterargument of its own.Leaving a Passover rally in April.Andres Kudacki for The New York TimesOn election night.Shuran Huang for The New York TimesAs Mr. Mamdani walks the tightrope between embodying change, generational and otherwise, and reassuring those who may be leery of such change, his clothes have played a not insignificant role. His mouth may be saying one thing, but very often his outfit is saying another.This is a man, after all, who appeared in Vogue India as long ago as 2020, when he won his seat in the State Assembly, and whose mother is the film director Mira Nair. He has long understood that costume is one way to convey character.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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      If Everyone Had Voted, Kamala Harris Still Would Have Lost

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      New data, based on authoritative voter records, suggests that Donald Trump would have done even better in 2024 with higher turnout.A voting line in Phoenix in November. Jon Cherry for The New York TimesIn the wake of last November’s election, many Democrats blamed low turnout for Kamala Harris’s defeat.It wasn’t entirely without reason, as turnout dropped in Democratic areas, but many months later it is clear the blame was misplaced. Newly available data, based on authoritative voter turnout records, suggests that if anything, President Trump would have done even better if everyone had voted.The new data, including a new study from Pew Research released Thursday, instead offers a more dispiriting explanation for Democrats: Young, nonwhite and irregular voters defected by the millions to Mr. Trump, costing Ms. Harris both the Electoral College and the popular vote.The findings suggest that Mr. Trump’s brand of conservative populism once again turned politics-as-usual upside down, as his gains among disengaged voters deprived Democrats of their traditional advantage with this group, who are disproportionately young and nonwhite.For a generation, the assumption that Democrats benefit from high turnout has underpinned the hopes and machinations of both parties, from Republican support for restrictive voting laws to Democratic hopes of mobilizing a new progressive coalition of young and nonwhite voters. It’s not clear whether Democrats will struggle with irregular voters in the future, but the data nonetheless essentially ends the debate about whether Ms. Harris lost because she alienated swing voters or because she failed to energize her base. In the end, Democrats alienated voters whose longtime support they might have taken for granted.The 2024 election may feel like old news, especially in the wake of Zohran Mamdani’s upset victory in New York City on Tuesday, but the best data on the outcome has only recently become available. Over the last two months, the last few states updated their official records of who did or did not vote in the election. These records unlock the most authoritative studies of the electorate, which link voter turnout records to high-quality surveys. More

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      Trump Won by Turning Out Voters and Building a Diverse Coalition, Report Finds

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      A new Pew Research Center study found that 85 percent of President Trump’s 2020 supporters came out to vote for him again, a better rate than Democrats pulled off.One of the most robust studies of the 2024 election shows that President Trump’s return to the White House was powered more heavily by his ability to turn out past supporters than by winning over Democratic voters, even as he built one of the most diverse coalitions in Republican Party history.The new report, released on Thursday from Pew Research Center, offers some of the most detailed analysis yet of what actually happened last fall, in particular how infrequent voters broke for Mr. Trump over former Vice President Kamala Harris.In the end, the math was simple and significant: A larger share of voters who supported Mr. Trump in the 2020 election — 85 percent — showed up to vote for him again in 2024. Ms. Harris earned the support of just 79 percent of former President Joseph R. Biden’s 2020 voters.The analysis showed that 5 percent of Mr. Biden’s voters flipped to Mr. Trump, while only 3 percent of Mr. Trump’s 2020 voters flipped to Ms. Harris.But the bigger factor was turnout: 15 percent of Mr. Biden’s voters did not vote at all in 2024, Pew found.Tony Fabrizio, who was the lead pollster for the Trump campaign, said the new report validated the campaign’s strategic successes.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 Triumphed Without a Majority of Black Voters. Where Does That Leave Them?

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      Black city leaders are worried their influence is waning at a moment when the rising costs that Zohran Mamdani put at the center of his campaign are pushing Black New Yorkers out of the city.For years, the conventional wisdom in New York among strategists and candidates alike has been that in any Democratic primary, the road to victory runs through Black communities.Then came Zohran Mamdani.In the race that culminated on Tuesday, Mr. Mamdani forged a new multiracial political coalition to become the likely Democratic nominee for mayor and topple Andrew M. Cuomo, the former governor, who had far more name recognition, financial firepower — and political baggage.And Mr. Mamdani did so even as he lost many of New York City’s most solidly Black neighborhoods. A New York Times analysis of the results shows that Mr. Cuomo dominated in precincts where at least 70 percent of residents are Black, more than doubling Mr. Mamdani’s support, 59 percent to 26 percent.The result is a break not just from the parochial politics of New York — Black voters helped deliver the mayoralty to both Eric Adams and his predecessor, Bill de Blasio — but from the nation as a whole. Black voters have served as the Democratic Party’s most important voting bloc this century, elevating Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joseph R. Biden Jr. as the party’s last three presidential nominees, oftentimes sanding down the most exuberant instincts of the left.Most famously, Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina rescued Mr. Biden’s flagging 2020 effort by rallying Black voters before his state’s primary in a bid to thwart Senator Bernie Sanders, though Mr. Clyburn’s backing did not appear to help Mr. Cuomo in this race’s closing stretch.In a city whose politics have been defined by race-based math, Mr. Mamdani’s success as a democratic socialist upended these traditional calculations and birthed a new and unconventional coalition. It also highlighted tensions between older and more moderate Black voters and the party’s most strident progressive wing, typically anchored by wealthier white voters.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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      As Donors Work Against Mamdani, Top Democrats Stop Short of Backing Him

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      After Zohran Mamdani’s performance in the New York City mayoral primary, Republicans and suburban Democrats attacked him, and party leaders seemed to be hedging their bets.The day after Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani rocked the nation’s largest city by becoming the presumptive Democratic mayoral nominee, New York’s political leaders declined to formally endorse him, and some donors to former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo considered coalescing behind Mayor Eric Adams.In an interview, Scott Rechler, one of the city’s biggest landlords, said that in a general election race between Mr. Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist, and Mr. Adams, he would put his support and potentially his financial resources behind the scandal-tarred incumbent.Mr. Rechler, who donated $250,000 to a super PAC supporting Mr. Cuomo, expressed hope that the former governor and Mr. Adams, who is running in the general election as an independent, would not split the centrist vote.“You want to have leadership that speaks to what New York is,” Mr. Rechler said. “It’s the capital of capitalism.”Mr. Cuomo, who for months led in Democratic primary polls, continued on Wednesday to leave open the possibility that he would run in November on a third-party line. Polls and conventional political wisdom suggest that such a move would only enhance Mr. Mamdani’s chances, at the expense of Mr. Adams.Bill Ackman, a hedge fund billionaire and supporter of President Trump who donated $500,000 to Mr. Cuomo’s super PAC, said on social media that he also “may ultimately support and endorse” Mr. Adams.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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      Polls Underestimated Mamdani. Here’s Why It’s So Hard to Poll Primaries.

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      Accurately gauging support in primaries can be notoriously difficult. Pollsters face multiple challenges.Polls largely underestimated Zohran Mamdani’s support in the Democratic primary for the New York City mayor, illustrating once again just how difficult it can be to accurately poll primary elections.When polling general elections, pollsters are helped by the fact that increasing polarization has led Americans to sort neatly into their political camps, with more than 90 percent of partisans supporting their party’s candidate. But in primary elections, partisanship no longer factors into voters’ decisions in the same way. Voters’ preferences are more fluid in partisan primaries and more difficult to track over time.Primaries also tend to be much more volatile than general elections, making the timeliness of a poll more relevant. In the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, nearly every Republican contender in the field took a turn as the front-runner in the polls before Donald J. Trump ultimately pulled ahead. And in the 2020 Democratic primary, Elizabeth Warren, Joseph R. Biden Jr., and Bernie Sanders ping-ponged in the polls.The New York City mayoral primary presents an additional challenge because of its use of ranked-choice voting. Pollsters took different approaches to try to mirror the process, but it is challenging to accurately simulate what voters actually experience at the ballot box.While most polls did not show Mr. Mamdani leading in the first round of balloting, they did appear to show him gaining support in the final weeks of the campaign.Polls in March and April of this year showed former Governor Andrew Cuomo ahead by 20 to 30 percentage points. Surveys conducted in May and June showed Mr. Mamdani cutting that lead down, often to single digits. And an Emerson College poll taken within a week of the election found Mr. Mamdani neck and neck in the first round and winning in the final round of voting. More

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      The Evolution of Trump’s Views on Foreign Aid

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      Foreign aid, a pillar of American foreign policy for generations, has been gutted since President Trump began his second term in office. The United States Agency for International Development and other government agencies that provide food, medical care and economic development assistance to the world’s poorest nations, have been largely defunded or eliminated in recent months.In justifying the administration’s destruction of the agency, Mr. Trump said U.S.A.I.D. had been run by “radical lunatics,” and he has made numerous false claims about the agency’s work in the developing world. It included preventing and treating H.I.V. and malaria; providing emergency food assistance; and advancing the country’s national security interests by establishing new markets for American goods.Mr. Trump has never been a big fan of foreign aid. But in his first term, he often reveled in the role of dispenser-in-chief of American largess.Not so anymore.To understand Mr. Trump’s evolution from foreign aid skeptic to enthusiastic supporter to, lately, its most determined and powerful foe, The New York Times reviewed nearly 1,000 speeches and interviews he has given over the past 15 years.2011As a presidential candidate in his first bid for office, Mr. Trump often described foreign assistance as wasteful and said the money would be better spent at home. “Foreign affairs is we take care of ourselves,” he said during an appearance on NBC’s “Today” show.

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      Democratic Leaders Tried to Crush Zohran Mamdani. They Should Have Been Taking Notes.

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      On Tuesday night, Zohran Mamdani shocked the political establishment. There are lessons that national Democrats should take from his strong showing in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City. But I worry they won’t. Democrats have a curiosity problem, and it’s losing us elections.After Bernie Sanders mounted a formidable challenge to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential primary, precious few Democratic leaders asked what they could learn from it. Two years later, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez came out of nowhere to defeat the No. 4-ranking Democrat in the House. They again dismissed it as a fluke.The party establishment’s impulse to stifle and ignore some of its most exciting emerging voices isn’t limited to progressives. Take Chris Deluzio in Pennsylvania or Pat Ryan in New York. While decidedly more moderate than Mr. Mamdani, both congressmen campaigned last fall on bringing down costs for people in their swing districts and taking on huge corporations and billionaires, a strategy Mr. Ryan described as “patriotic populism.” Even though it won them both races, Washington Democrats have been hesitant to embrace that strategy.I saw similar complacency last year while advising Ruben Gallego’s successful Senate campaign in Arizona. Although Mr. Gallego was the only Democratic candidate in the race, we struggled to get buy-in early on from the Washington Democratic establishment. It saw his blunt-spoken style as too risky for Arizona. He went on to outperform Kamala Harris by eight points.If Democratic leaders don’t start asking themselves how these candidates won, and what they can learn from their success, we’ll be doomed to fail in the future.Since their losses last fall, Democrats have obsessed over how to reverse their declining fortunes. By and large, the consensus has been that we need candidates with a sharp economic argument that can connect with young people, men, voters of color and the working class.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