Democrat Zohran Mamdani has won New York’s mayoral race, NBC News projects, after the 34-year-old democratic socialist energized progressives in the city and across the country while generating intense backlash from President Donald Trump and Republicans, as well as some Democratic moderates.
In his victory speech after vanquishing former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Mamdani claimed a broad mandate and set himself up in direct opposition to Trump, who made a late endorsement against him. "In this moment of political darkness, New York will be the light," Mamdani said.
"Together, we will usher in a generation of change, and if we embrace this brave new course, rather than fleeing from it, we can respond to oligarchy and authoritarianism with the strength it fears, not the appeasement it craves," Mamdani said later, before challenging Trump directly.
"This is not only how we stop Trump, it's how we stop the next one," Mamdani said. "So Donald Trump, since I know you're watching, I have four words for you: Turn the volume up."
Trump wasn't the only subject of Mamdani's speech, which he started by quoting the 19th- and 20th-century American socialist Eugene Debs and continued by promising the "most ambitious agenda" to address costs in New York City since the administration of Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia nearly 100 years ago.
Mamdani defeated Cuomo, who ran as a third-party candidate after losing the Democratic primary in June, by about 9 points, with Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa trailing far behind. Mayor Eric Adams, who also mounted a third-party campaign for re-election after he won as a Democrat in 2021, dropped out of the race in September and endorsed Cuomo last month.
The victory caps a meteoric rise through New York politics for Mamdani since he launched his campaign roughly one year ago, transforming him from a virtually unknown state assemblyman who barely registered in polling to the incoming leader of America’s largest city.
Along the way, he pushed aside the heir to one of New York’s most iconic political dynasties not once but twice within five months.
Now a nationally known political figure, Mamdani will attempt to enact the sweeping policy platform that inspired his supporters while managing an enormous municipal bureaucracy — and influencing national politics, as one of the most prominent democratic socialists and Democrats in the country. Among other goals, Mamdani wants to freeze rent on rent-stabilized units, enact universal child care, create a free bus program and launch city-run grocery stores.
“It is tempting to believe that this moment was always destined,” Mamdani said before thousands at a rally in Queens late last month, before he noted that when he started his campaign, “there was not a single television camera there to cover it.”
“Four months later and as recently as this February, our support had reached eye-watering heights of 1%,” Mamdani continued. “We were tied with noted candidate ‘someone else.’”
Mamdani’s victory is sure to reverberate not just throughout New York City but around the nation.
In New York, Mamdani’s next challenge will be the tall task of uniting leaders in Albany and on the City Council — many of whom were not eager to line up behind him — to advance his ambitious agenda.
Nationally, many Democrats will examine his rise from obscurity, his successful messaging on social media and his focus on affordability for clues about how to navigate their own races.
Meanwhile, Republicans are eager to turn Mamdani’s left-wing platform into a wedge issue in competitive races far beyond New York City’s borders.
NBC News exit polling found that Mamdani won across racial demographics — with white, Black, Latino, Asian and voters of other races all backing his candidacy over Cuomo’s and Sliwa’s.
Younger voters overwhelmingly backed Mamdani, with NBC News exit polling showing that voters under 45 years old favored him over Cuomo by 43 points. Voters over 45, meanwhile, backed Cuomo by a 10-point margin.
Education played a big role, too, the exit polling showed. And one of the biggest divides in the election was between New Yorkers who were born in the city and those who had moved to New York within the last 10 years.
Meanwhile, with Mamdani’s pro-Palestinian activism having become a key issue in the race, NBC News exit polling found that Jewish voters favored Cuomo over Mamdani by 29 points, 60% to 31%.
Speaking to supporters after his defeat on Tuesday, Cuomo thanked Adams, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former New York Gov. David Paterson for their support. He called voters at his election eve party "New York patriots."
“This campaign was the right fight to wage," Cuomo said. "And I am proud of what we did and what we did together. This campaign was to contest the philosophies that are shaping the Democratic Party, the future of this city and the future of this country. And this coalition transcended normal partisan politics.”
The closing weeks of the race turned into a brawl between Mamdani and Cuomo, the onetime front-runner who spent the general election trying to play catch-up. The two had heated debates in recent weeks, with Cuomo calling Mamdani a “divisive force in New York” while Mamdani painted Cuomo as Trump’s “puppet.”
Trump made a late jump into the race Monday night, endorsing Cuomo on social media and saying a vote for Sliwa, the Republican nominee, was essentially a vote for Mamdani in the split general election field.
Interestingly, exit polling showed self-identified Republicans favored Cuomo over Sliwa, with 61% of Republicans him while just 35% backed Sliwa.
Late last month, Mamdani delivered an emotional address condemning what he slammed as “racist, baseless” attacks he has faced for his Muslim faith. He will be the first Muslim mayor in New York City history. His unapologetically pro-Palestinian stance energized progressives who oppose Israel’s war in Gaza, as pro-Israel Democrats and donors grew anxious about his rise.
At a rally alongside Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., days later, Mamdani said Cuomo, Adams and Sliwa possess only “the playbook of the past.”
“They have sought to make this election a referendum not on the affordability crisis that consumes New Yorkers’ lives,” he said, “but on the faith I belong to and the hatred they seem to normalize.”
