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New Yorkers are voting on Tuesday in the city’s Democratic mayoral primary, a contest that could provide clues about the direction of a party still reeling from its defeat to Donald Trump in last year’s presidential election.
The contest has turned into a duel between former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, the frontrunner, and Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist with huge appeal among younger voters.
Mamdani has been steadily rising in the polls since the beginning of the year. The latest data, released on Monday by Emerson College, found 36 per cent named Cuomo as their first choice, versus 34 per cent who preferred Mamdani.
Prediction markets, including Polymarket and Kalshi, have shifted towards Mamdani in the final days of the campaign and show the race as a dead heat.
Whoever wins the primary in the overwhelmingly Democratic city will be a shoo-in to win the mayoral election in November.
A strong showing by Mamdani would signal that Democratic voters in the nation’s biggest city are turning their backs on the party’s establishment, which could have big implications for primaries ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
It would also indicate what kind of candidate Democrats may want to run in the presidential race in three years’ time — either a moderate centrist such as former president Bill Clinton or a young progressive in the mould of congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Alyssa Cass, a Democratic strategist, said the message of Mamdani’s popularity had lessons for Democrats across the country.
“We’d better listen to what voters are screaming in our faces, which is that they want real, authentic voices, they want leaders who bear no resemblance to the status quo and they want people who are fighting on the issues that are close to them, not those that are dear to the elite intelligentsia.”
Mamdani has based his campaign on a promise to make life more affordable for New Yorkers, who have seen their cost of living soar since the Covid-19 pandemic. If elected, he says he will raise taxes on the rich to fund free buses and childcare, as well as city-owned grocery stores.
Cuomo, a longtime fixture of New York politics, is seeking a comeback four years after stepping down as governor of the state amid accusations of sexual harassment — which he denies. He is running as a moderate with the requisite political experience to resist president Trump.
The incumbent scandal-hit mayor, Eric Adams, will run as an independent. According to a poll in March, his approval rating stands at just 20 per cent after he was indicted last year on charges of bribery, fraud, soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations and conspiracy as part of a scheme involving Turkey’s government. The case was ultimately dismissed.
Cuomo, meanwhile, has positioned himself as the candidate of working-class New Yorkers, promising to restore law and order by hiring more police officers, raising the minimum wage and removing red tape to help developers build more affordable housing.
The Cuomo campaign’s television ads portrayed him as a tough guy and Mamdani as a “dangerously inexperienced legislator” with a staff you can “fit in to a New York elevator”. “Trump’s at the city gates — we need someone experienced to slam them shut,” the voiceover says.
Mamdani has promised to be a change agent who would “turn the page on years of corruption and incompetence”.
“Democrats are tired of being told by leaders from the past that we should continue to simply wait our turn, should continue to simply trust, when we know that’s the very leadership that got us to this point,” he said in a June 4 mayoral primary candidate debate.
At a weekend rally for Mamdani attended by thousands of volunteers, Ocasio-Cortez said Cuomo was part of the “gerontocracy” dominating politics.
National politics, in particular Trump’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants, have intruded repeatedly in the campaign. Brad Lander, New York’s progressive comptroller, who is also running in the primary, was arrested by masked agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement last week as he tried to escort a migrant from an immigration court in Manhattan.
The Emerson College poll shows Lander in third place — trailing Cuomo and Mamdani by more than 20 percentage points. The polls close at 9pm on Tuesday and the result is not expected for several days.
Additional reporting by Sam Learner and Oliver Roeder in New York
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