Analysts are still struggling to fully explain Zohran Mamdani’s decisive victory in last month’s New York City mayoral election, and like the blind men in the old Indian fable “The Blind Men and the Elephant,” most of the explanations offered so far are accurate but incomplete.
Mamdani’s focus on affordability clearly resonated with voters, as did his personal warmth and accessibility, which were evident in his social media presence. His relentless travel schedule, meeting voters face-to-face and engaging with them wherever they were, further fueled his success, reflecting an authentic desire to connect with people and invite them into a shared political project.
In a stagnant political environment dominated by election consultants and formulaic campaigns, Mamdani carved out a genuinely new path. While his opponents poured tens of millions of dollars into negative, attack-heavy advertising, Mamdani’s campaign felt fresh, optimistic, and energizing. Running against a lavishly funded effort backed by a former governor and much of the New York Democratic Party establishment—an establishment that viewed him as a direct threat to its hold on power—he not only prevailed but secured more votes than any mayoral candidate in the city’s history.
Three additional factors played a critical role in shaping this outcome. The first is New York City’s profound demographic transformation. In 1980, more than half of the city’s population was white; today, whites comprise less than one-third. In 1980, the Latino population stood at 1.4 million; today it has grown to 2.5 million. Over the same period, the Black population remained relatively stable at around 1.7 million, but more than a third of Black New Yorkers today are immigrants or the children of recent immigrants from Africa or the Caribbean. Equally significant has been the dramatic growth of the city’s Asian population, which has expanded from a few hundred thousand to approximately 1.4 million.
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These demographic shifts, driven largely by new immigrant communities, fundamentally reshaped the electorate and exerted a decisive influence on this election. Mamdani won overwhelmingly among Asian, Latino, and Black voters, while also performing remarkably well among white voters, nearly splitting that vote with his main opponent—an uncommon feat in New York City politics.
Another crucial factor was the emergence of a powerful grassroots movement. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) played a central role in Mamdani’s victory. With thousands of organizers operating across the city, the DSA had already delivered a series of unexpected wins over the past decade. The most prominent came in 2018, when a little-known challenger, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, defeated Congressman Joseph Crowley, then chairman of the Democratic Party in Queens and vice chair of the House Democratic caucus.
Crowley enjoyed overwhelming establishment support and vastly superior funding, but the party machinery he led had grown complacent and disconnected. Ocasio-Cortez, by contrast, mobilized a disciplined grassroots operation that out-organized the establishment, foreshadowing Mamdani’s own insurgent campaign. In the years that followed, DSA activists secured numerous victories in state and local races throughout the city, including Mamdani’s own election to the New York State Assembly in 2021, demonstrating that a movement powered by committed grassroots organizers could effectively challenge entrenched political power and big money.
The final, and perhaps most consequential, factor shaping Mamdani’s victory was the impact of the war in Gaza on voter attitudes broadly and within New York City’s Jewish community in particular. For decades, the prevailing assumption in city politics was that any serious candidate was required to demonstrate unwavering loyalty to Israel, based on the belief that New York’s Jewish community voted as a monolithic bloc. This assumption not only shut down meaningful debate about the Middle East but also marginalized Arab Americans and, especially after 9/11, Muslim Americans, severely constraining their participation in the city’s political life.
A stark example dates back to 1988, when Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaign became the first to actively welcome Arab Americans. A rally and fundraiser organized by Arab Americans for Jackson in New York became one of the campaign’s most successful events. When one of Jackson’s New York campaign co-chairs later announced a mayoral run, Arab Americans were prepared to mobilize in support. Early the following year, the candidate and his campaign manager summoned me to New York and bluntly explained that the city’s Jewish establishment was angered by Arab involvement in Jackson’s campaign and by Jackson’s advocacy for Palestinian rights. “Tell your people we don’t want their support,” they said. “If the Arabs give us $1,000, the Jewish community will raise $100,000 to defeat us. Keep them away.”
I left that meeting stunned and furious, and shared the experience with prominent Jewish writers at The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Village Voice, who published scathing critiques of this discriminatory exclusion. Yet fear prevailed, and the practice continued. Against this backdrop, the transformation witnessed in New York’s most recent elections is striking. Israel’s war on Gaza fundamentally reshaped the political landscape. Support for Palestinian rights and criticism of Israeli government policies moved to the center of political debate. Arab and Muslim communities were welcomed rather than sidelined. At the same time, the election shattered the long-standing myth of a unified Jewish vote.
Despite an intense backlash from segments of the Jewish establishment, with some leaders branding Mamdani an “enemy of the Jewish community,” a majority of young Jewish voters supported him, along with more than a third of Jewish voters overall. Taken together, these dynamics reveal how profoundly New York City has changed, how the Democratic Party is evolving within it, and how Arab American, Muslim American, and Jewish American communities are redefining their political roles—changes that, taken as a whole, mark genuine progress. The conclusion is inescapable: New York is no longer the city it once was.
James Zogby (translated by Asaf Zilberfarb)