Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani (D. NY)
I’m actually heading to New York tomorrow night for work and fun and I have some good news for you ahead of tomorrow’s big primary day:
The final major independent poll before Primary Day in New York City shows Queens Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani passing former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the last round of a ranked-choice voting simulation.
The survey of Democratic mayoral primary of early voters and likely voters from PIX11 News, Emerson College, and The Hill shows Mamdani winning in the final round, 52%, to Cuomo’s 48%.
Cuomo has the greatest number of first-choice ballots, with the first round of the ranked choice voting simulation showing him at 36%, Mamdani at 34%, and New York City Comptroller Brad Lander at 13%. Cuomo maintains his lead as the simulation plays out until the final round, when Lander is eliminated and the majority of his “second choice” ballots flow to Mamdani.
More info from Emerson:
Voters who have already cast their ballots during New York City’s early voting period break for Mamdani, who holds a 10-point lead over Cuomo, 41% to 31%. In contrast, among those who plan to vote on election day or have not yet voted at the time of the survey, Cuomo leads with 36%, followed by Mamdani at 31%.
The first round of the RCV simulation includes n=800, with a margin of error of +/-3.4%. The final round includes n=729, with a MOE of +/-3.6%. Undecided voters are excluded from the rank choice simulation.
In the final round of ranked-choice voting, several demographic trends emerge:
- Voters under 50 break for Mamdani by a 2:1 margin, while Cuomo leads among those aged 50–59 (63% to 37%) and voters over 60 (56% to 44%).
- Hispanic voters support Cuomo 60% to 40%, and Black voters favor Cuomo 62% to 38%. Mamdani leads among white voters (61% to 39%) and Asian voters (79% to 21%).
- Cuomo leads Mamdani among voters without a four-year college degree, 61% to 39%, while Mamdani leads Cuomo among college-educated voters, 62% to 38%.
- Men support Mamdani 56% to 44%, while women lean toward Cuomo 52% to 48%.
FYI:
Mamdani, an outspoken critic of US foreign policy in the Middle East – especially American support for the Israeli assault on Gaza — argued that the attack on Iran would have consequences for New Yorkers. “In a city as global as ours, the impacts of war are felt deeply here at home. I am thinking of the New Yorkers with loved ones in harm’s way,” he explained, at a point when bombs were falling throughout the Middle East. “While Donald Trump bears immediate responsibility for this illegal escalation, these actions are the result of a political establishment that would rather spend trillions of dollars on weapons than lift millions out of poverty, launch endless wars while silencing calls for peace, and fearmonger about outsiders while billionaires hollow out our democracy from within. For Americans middle aged and younger, this is all we have known. We cannot accept it any longer.”
Mamdani’s powerful message was echoed by Lander, the New York City Comptroller who has formed a late-stage tag team with Mamdani in the waning weeks of the mayoral race. Lander said, “Trump’s reckless and unconstitutional strikes against Iran are a dangerous escalation of war — and threaten countless Iranian, Israeli and American lives. My thoughts are with families fearing for their safety, and the thousands of New Yorkers worrying tonight about loved ones in Iran.”
And what of Cuomo? In the hours after the attack, his campaign was busy posting pictures of the candidate riding in a truck. Then, he was touting an endorsement from the ultimate establishment Democrat, former President Bill Clinton. Regarding the administration’s bombing of Iran, the Cuomo-friendly New York Post announced on Sunday morning, “The Cuomo campaign had no immediate comment on the US airstrikes.”
When the former governor finally spoke up on Sunday afternoon, Politico reported, “Cuomo told reporters Sunday he supported taking out Iran’s nuclear facilities.” While he suggested that he wished the president had consulted Congress, Cuomo echoed talking points from the White House and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, claiming that the attack made the world a “safer place.”
Also:
The Mamdani campaign’s focus on lowering the cost of living should serve as a blueprint for progressives across the country seeking to embed climate action in real improvements for working peoples’ lives. With over 40,000 volunteers, Mamdani’s campaign for “A City We Can Afford” has done what the climate movement has long struggled to achieve: activated one in two hundred New Yorkers to convince their friends, families, and neighbors that taking on the corporate interests that dominate the city’s politics is possible.
Mamdani has pledged to prevent rent increases for the city’s two million rent-stabilized tenants. The campaign has focused on the economic relief provided by a rent freeze, but the plan has knock-on climate benefits, too. A rent freeze would stop displacement when landlords try to pass the cost of necessary green retrofits or push working-class tenants out to attract wealthier residents when improvements to transit access, parks, and schools make neighborhoods more attractive.
His focus on empowering the public sector to build housing and fully staffing the city’s housing agencies will enable the city to do repairs, enforce habitability laws, and build the new deeply affordable green housing that New Yorkers need to thrive as disasters and environmental stress increase. And his housing proposals speak directly to the concerns of the 800,000 minimum-wage workers who would need to work 106 hours to afford renting at 30 percent of their income in Manhattan; other boroughs are only slightly more affordable.
At a time when one-third of households leaving the city are moving to find more affordable housing — a rate that has nearly doubled since the COVID-19 pandemic began and disproportionately affected black and Hispanic New Yorkers — ensuring permanently affordable green housing in areas with access to public transit and systems like parks, libraries, and schools is a recipe for ensuring working-class New Yorkers can enjoy low-carbon lives.
Establishing free, universal childcare — a top expense for families with young children — also allows working-class families to stay in high-density, lower-emission areas and maintains the social fabric of the city, lowering the number of people forced to flee urban areas for more resource- and energy-intensive suburbs. The extreme unaffordability of childcare and housing in New York City has made families with children aged six or younger — 14 percent of the city’s population — more than twice as likely to pack up and leave, according to a study from the Fiscal Policy Institute.
Cuts to the city’s popular 3-K and pre-K programs will worsen the city’s childcare crisis and drive more middle-class New Yorkers to leave as housing and food prices also skyrocket. Mamdani’s plan would go further than simply maintaining the status quo by establishing free, universal childcare for children five years old and under — it would offer the economic and social stability required to avoid turning the city into a haven for the wealthiest only.
Mamdani’s transit plan, too, has centered investment in fast, free buses, an infrastructural and public policy shift that would expand access to affordable low-carbon mobility for all. As the home of the most extensive metro system in the country, New York City’s transportation system still accounts for 20 percent of the city’s emissions. One of Mamdani’s major successes as an assemblymember was winning a fare-free bus pilot program that resulted in a 30-38 percent increase in the number of rides taken, with 11 percent of new riders selecting the free bus route over a car or taxi.
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