How Zohran Mamdani Won

Key Takeaways

• Words associated with prices and affordability appeared in 78% of Zohran Mamdani ads, YouTube, and TikTok videos, versus in just 32% of Andrew Cuomo’s content.
• In an exit poll conducted in the final days of the mayoral election, 51% of New York City voters chose “affordable prices” as one of Mamdani’s top three issues, while only 24% said the same for the national Democratic Party — a 27-point difference.
• With his relentless focus on the cost-of-living crisis, Mamdani avoided usual Democratic problems with “crowding out” his best issues with other lower-priority issues.

Our Goals

Post-election analyses are typically dominated by theorizing about what the election means and what it was about. Was it immigration? Prices? Housing? There are lots of takes, but not a lot of real information.

Our approach to overcoming this trap is twofold. First, we collaborated with the folks at Nontoxic Media, a content monitoring firm, to figure out what the NYC mayoral candidates actually talked about, not just what made for interesting Twitter chatter or struck the media’s imagination. Via the algorithmic wizardry of Nontoxic’s flagship tool, Sonar, which produces transcripts and topic analysis of ingested content, we assembled a picture of the distribution and frequency of topics featured in candidate videos, including paid ads and organic candidate content from YouTube and TikTok.

Second, we surveyed NYC voters. What did they think the election was about? Why did they vote? What did they hear about from candidates? We ran this poll in the last days of the election to try to understand voters’ perceptions on the ground.

The gap between “what you say” and “what voters hear” can be wide. We’ve previously put forth theories about “crowding out” effects — that a party (or candidate) with too many priorities can dilute their message. The NYC mayoral election offers an opportunity to test this theory and directly compare what candidates talked about with what voters believed they were focused on.

A Brief History of Recent NYC Mayoral Elections

Before we get into the 2025 mayoral election, let’s take a little walk down memory lane.

In 2013, Michael Bloomberg was in the twilight of his three mayoral terms, having led the city through its post-9/11 recovery and the 2008 financial crisis. However, the city was still struggling to recover, with an unemployment rate slightly worse than the national average. At the same time, the public was souring on some of Bloomberg’s hallmark policies, like stop-and-frisk policing.

This was reflected in the polls: A June 2013 Marist survey found that NYC voters ranked jobs (23%) as their top priority, while an August 2013 Quinnipiac poll found that 60 percent of likely Democratic primary voters said the city’s stop-and-frisk policy was excessive. Harnessing NYC voters’ desires to address economic and social inequality, Bill de Blasio shaped his campaign narrative around a “Tale of Two Cities,” which propelled him to victory in the primary over establishment favorite Christine Quinn and onto a commanding victory in the general election.

Flash forward to 2021. After two de Blasio terms, the mayoral primary unfolded in the aftermath of seismic events that rocked the nation, and NYC especially: the COVID-19 pandemic and the murder of George Floyd. A May 2021 Spectrum News NY1/Ipsos poll found that 46% of likely Democratic primary voters cited crime and public safety as the most important issue, well above topics like economic recovery or stopping the spread of COVID-19. Buttressed by concerns about public disorder, and aided by a glut of vote-splitting progressive candidates, Eric Adams won NYC’s first-ever ranked choice primary election and cruised to election in November.

Now to the present. The June 2025 mayoral primary looked a lot more like 2013 than 2021. After four years of economic pressures and rising housing costs, voters anchored their policy concerns around affordability. An April 2025 Siena College poll found 72% of NYC voters thought affordability was “a very serious problem,” compared to only 47% who said the same about crime.

Meanwhile, the progressive left learned a critical lesson from 2021 and developed a strategic front against the establishment candidates. In a move not dissimilar to the 2013 “Anybody but Quinn” campaign, progressives rallied their base around a D.R.E.A.M (Don’t Rank Eric or Andrew for Mayor) slate. Their consolidation paid off. Voters rejected establishment favorite and former Governor Andrew Cuomo to propel NYC Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani to a 12-point primary victory.

The Media Analysis

Most of us can’t follow candidates around and listen to what they say every hour of the day. What is accessible to the public is the same sort of thing most voters are exposed to: paid media and organic social media content.

For this project, our analysis includes YouTube and TikTok videos, sourced from Nontoxic’s dataset, by the three NYC mayoral candidates — Zohran Mamdani, Andrew Cuomo, and Curtis Sliwa — as of October 29. (This unfortunately means we did not include some of the weirder AI-generated late ads).

Those social media channels include everything from formally produced ads to video shorts, to TV appearances reposted by the campaign. And while YouTube and TikTok don’t include every single candidate communication — indeed, many social media sites like Facebook aren’t even scrapable anymore — they do represent a solid cross section of the sort of content voters are likely to see and hear throughout the course of the campaign.

We were interested less in formal policy proposals and position-taking — and more in how candidates presented themselves to voters and utilized their messaging time.

The Ads

Ads are the most distilled version of what candidates want voters to hear, and reflect their absolute top priorities. But ads are also expensive to produce and distribute. The total number of candidate-generated ads was dwarfed by other online video content.

According to his ads, Mamdani really, really wanted people to know that he was going to freeze the rent. He spent far more ad space than the other candidates talking about billionaires, child care, and groceries. Cuomo instead focused on policing, various crises he perceived to be facing the city, and speaking directly to and about Black people. It’s quite the contrast.

Mamdani

What did Mamdani talk about in his general content? Prices and affordability, constantly. Words associated with prices and affordability showed up in 78% of all Mamdani content versus just 32% of Cuomo’s content. “Rent” specifically appears in 22% of Mamdani’s communications, and other terms associated with housing in 42%.

As you might expect, Mamdani’s key policy slogans showed up frequently. “Bus” was referenced in 17% of all pieces and about a third of the ads. Both other candidates talk about buses less than 5% of the time. Perhaps characteristic of their differences, both Cuomo and Sliwa are much more likely to talk about the subway, but far less likely to talk about the bus.

One place of notable divergence between Mamdani’s ads and general content was on child care. The topic was mentioned in 38% of the ads, but only 9% of overall content. Mamdani talks about Donald Trump more than the other candidates, but not overwhelmingly.

The president’s name appears in just 17% of Mamdani’s official content, but in 44% of ads run by his independent expenditure, New Yorkers for Lower Costs (an independent expenditure is an outside committee that is set up to support a specific candidate, but is completely separate from the official campaign and is prohibited from coordinating directly with them).

Also notable was what he did not talk about in the content we analyzed: “Muslim” appears in only 3% of Mamdani videos, “Gaza” in just 2%, and “climate” in a mere 1% (literally, six total mentions).

Cuomo

You can see Cuomo’s priorities clearly in how he talks. He over-indexes on “police” and other terms relating to crime and safety; 60% of his total content includes some mention of crime or related topics. He’s also more likely to use emotionally charged language like “crisis” to describe the city, and generally spends more time talking about the government and the state. 56% of Cuomo’s content includes references to his leadership, experience as governor, or tenure with the city.

Concerns about pricing and affordability do still appear in about half of Cuomo’s general content, but less frequently in his ads. His approach to cost of living was more focused on “jobs” (27% of content) and “work” (34%) than Mamdani.

Housing was a big topic for Cuomo, appearing in 31% of his content. He was more likely than Mamdani to talk about “building” or “construction,” and less likely to talk about rent. Cuomo was also more likely to mention “homeless” or “homelessness” than Mamdani, appearing in about 12% of his content. Cuomo’s content rarely touches on social issues, apart from a handful of videos reminding the audience of his early support for gay marriage as governor.

Sliwa

When it came to their opposition, both Cuomo and Mamdani seldom touched on Curtis Sliwa. Trump appears in 15% of Mamdani’s communications and 13% of Cuomo’s, while Sliwa appears in just 2.5% of Cuomo’s overall communications and 1% of Mamdani’s.

Sliwa, on the other hand, focused much more on his opponents. He references both candidates by name quite a bit (nearly 30% of the time, for Cuomo) and often talks about being the Republican (20% of the time). His other big topic appeared to be cleaning up the subway and the streets, with an honorable mention to “the war on women.”

Minor Sidenote

There’s pretty much no rat content! None of the candidates talked about rats particularly, and certainly not nearly as much as Eric Adams.

The Poll

Methodology

This was a poll of the likely NYC mayoral electorate, based on best available targets the week of October 27. Then, on election night, we took the results as known at 11:30 p.m., with 90% of the votes counted and results stable, and reweighted the poll to match. We wanted our poll to match the electorate as closely as possible, which makes the results here more representative of the actual voters who turned out.

Results

The final margins (as known on election night) were Mamdani 50.4%, Cuomo 41.6%, Sliwa 7.1%. Turnout was incredibly high, having broken 2 million votes cast with 90% of the vote counted.

Mamdani wildly outperformed the other candidates on enthusiasm, with 69% of his voters saying they were “very enthusiastic” about supporting him versus just 29% of Cuomo voters saying the same. Some of this may be due to Cuomo voters not believing he could actually win: 52% said it was “somewhat” likely, and 32% “a little” or “not at all” likely.

Issue Priorities

As reported by voters themselves, their vote was decided by affordable housing, affordable prices, and crime. Mamdani was seen as giving highest priority to the top two issues, reflective of his intense focus on affordability. Cuomo was somewhat closer to voters on prioritizing crime, but seen as overcorrecting and having too much focus on the issue.

Mamdani’s commitment to being relentlessly on message paid off. You can also see his other policy priorities (and slogans) showed up, with “access to public transit” (11% of voters ranked it as a top priority, 45% said he prioritized it) and “child care” (7% and 18%, respectively). Voters were much less focused on these issues, but given the tight integration with his overall focus on costs, he likely still benefited from them.

One place where Cuomo was more in line with voters was on the importance of homelessness: 28% of voters said this was a top issue of theirs, and 30% saw it as a top issue in media coverage of the race. However, Cuomo voters were much more likely to prioritize addressing crime, with 69% citing it as a top priority.

To New York City voters, this election was not at all about Israel. Both candidates were seen as focusing on it more than voters, with Cuomo far more than Mamdani. As we saw in the media analysis, despite his vocal stances in support of Palestinian rights, Mamdani barely ever spoke about the issue in the communications we analyzed, preferring to stay on message about costs and affordability.

Only 4% of Mamdani voters selected Israel/Gaza as a top-three priority, generally reflecting Mamdani’s agreement with deprioritizing the issue. Climate change, LGBTQ+ issues, and abortion were likewise basically off the table during this election. Voters saw Mamdani (and Cuomo) as much less focused on these issues than national Democrats, which put them far more in line with voter priorities. This is suggestive evidence that it is possible for Democrats to break from the party brand and improve their alignment with voter interests.

In particular, voters saw Mamdani as more focused on affordable housing and prices than the national Democratic party. Voters were 27 points more likely to choose “affordable prices” as one of his top three issues than they were to select that for the Democratic Party. The difference on “affordable housing” could potentially be explained by housing’s status as a local issue, but “prices” are undeniably a national concern.

The media analysis helps explain how Mamdani shaped this election. He avoided usual Democratic problems with “crowding out” his best issues with other lower priority issues by not talking about them. By the end of the campaign, Mamdani’s message consistency became a running joke among reporters — a sign of its effectiveness.

Policy

Much like a recent experiment on free buses from The New York Times, we find a wide gap between baseline support for a policy and belief in that policy’s feasibility and likelihood of implementation. Instead of asking should this policy happen, we asked voters if they believed it was likely to happen.

The most popular issue, free child care for all children under 5, had just under a majority convinced that it will become policy. That is a 20-point gap from support. Free transit performed far worse, with 45% support collapsing to 25% who believe that it will happen. The most popular Mamdani policies enjoy decent support, but voters seem to need more proof that they’ll become law before they’re willing to believe.

As a counterpoint, NYC voters are more likely to think increases to police headcounts are going to happen than they are to actually support them. Given that this was an Adams policy taken up by Cuomo, the lukewarm support for the policy and its seeming inevitability may help explain his loss.

When voters were deciding their candidate, the candidate’s policy positions, their positions’ practicality, and their vision for the city played a role. A majority of respondents (60%) expressed a desire for a mayor who will change things in NYC with transformative leadership rather than a steadier hand for the city (33%). Voters were also motivated to choose their candidate because of their policy positions (66%) rather than a candidate’s personal character or qualities (26%).

Voters were split on if they would rather have realistic proposals that could be implemented or proposals that represent the direction they want to see the city go in even if they are less likely to be fulfilled (50%-44%). While voters seem to want change in the city, they want the next mayor to focus on improving existing systems rather than major policy changes (52%-31%).

In Voters’ Own Words

When voters were asked about their perception of each candidate in an open-ended format, the division between the candidates became even more apparent. When asked what the main reasons were to vote for Cuomo, a majority of voters (51%) responded with experience or governance competence. The second-most popular response was opposition to candidates or ideology (15%).

The top reason people would vote for Mamdani was his focus on “affordability and working-class policies” (45%). “Integrity, empathy, and trustworthiness” and “new leadership and fresh Ideas” were closely tied for second (16% and 15%, respectively). When asked about the best reasons to NOT vote for Cuomo, his sexual misconduct and toxic workplace allegations were the No. 1 reason (36%). The top reasons to NOT vote for Mamdani were “inexperience/lack of leadership” (27%) and “far-left/socialist ideology” (29%).

Conclusion

Zohran Mamdani focused his campaign message and media strategy entirely on affordable housing and the cost of living — the two leading issues that New York City voters said they prioritized most as they headed to the polls. His relentless focus on the issues that matter most to voters propelled him forward and offered a clear profile for his insurgent candidacy.

Meanwhile, Mamdani’s social media, paid advertisements, and video content continued to drive that same focus on affordable housing and the cost of living. His campaign and the results of the mayoral election underscore the media and political successes of developing a clear agenda and message that addresses voters and represents their interests.