Zohran Mamdani’s decisive victory in the mayoral race Tuesday night broke records in more ways than one.
Not only will the Queens Assembly member become the city’s first South Asian and Muslim mayor, and the youngest in more than a century, he also hauled in nearly as many votes — more than 1,036,000 — as cast in entire mayoral elections in recent years. In all, voters cast more than 2 million votes, the most since 1969.
Nearly 39% of the city’s registered voters turned out to vote in this election. The last election to see that level of turnout was in 2001, when Michael Bloomberg won his first term as mayor and 41% of voters cast ballots.
Not a single neighborhood in NYC had a smaller turnout this election than in the last.
Many of Mamdani’s most loyal bases showed up in numbers. Mamdani won 60% of the votes in election districts where there are more South Asians than people of any other ethnicity. Young voters also showed up in droves, with Millennials casting 29% of the votes this election — a larger share than any other generation, according to voter history records obtained by THE CITY Thursday.
But the mayor-elect didn’t just win the general election on the strength of voters who had already cast ballots for him in the June primary. His campaign also mobilized voters in communities that had turned out heavily for Cuomo in the primary, which only included registered Democrats. (In 85% of election districts, more than half of all voters registered as Democrats.)
Here are four constituencies that Mamdani flipped Tuesday night that catapulted him to success:
1. Black Neighborhoods
During the primary, Mamdani was bested by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo by nearly 6 points in neighborhoods with more Black residents than those of any other race — a crucial voting bloc in New York City mayoral elections.
Mamdani won 64% of the votes in those areas this time around, up 25 points from his 39% in June. The top 10 neighborhoods where he gained the most since the primary are all located in either southeast Queens or the eastern parts of Brooklyn — in historically Black neighborhoods where Mamdani turned his focus to after the primary.
While registered voters in these Black neighborhoods were less likely than those in heavily white or Asian neighborhoods to have turned out for the election, they were also much more likely to have voted for Mamdani. Mamdani won more decisively in those neighborhoods than in areas where other races were the plurality, crushing Cuomo by 32 points.
2. The Bronx
Of all five boroughs, turnout was lowest in The Bronx — where just 28% of registered voters cast a ballot. But that didn’t stop Mamdani from reversing his 18-point defeat to Cuomo in the primary to take The Bronx by 11 points during the general election, winning 51% of the votes there.
While some of Mamdani’s closest races with Cuomo also came in The Bronx — including in Co-op City, North Riverdale, and Clason Point, where he narrowly took by four, six and eight points respectively — his triumph in the borough was helped by large-margin victories in areas where his canvassers had left their mark. That includes Parkchester, home to a large Bengali population, where he bested Cuomo by 29 points to win 68% of the votes, and in nearby Westchester Square, where he won by 42 points, with 68% of the votes.
Mamdani also made some inroads with Latino voters, many of whom live in The Bronx. He gained 9 points from the primary to win 58% of the votes, widening the margin since the primary and defeating Cuomo by 24 points in neighborhoods where more than half the residents are Latino.
While direct comparisons between the Democratic primary and general election results are not possible because different groups of voters were eligible to cast ballots — for instance, Asian voters are less likely than those in other groups to be registered Democrats — the shifts nonetheless suggest how Mamdani’s base has evolved since June.
3. Public Housing
The mayor-elect has vowed to double the city’s capital investment into NYCHA, which is heavily funded by the federal government and has been overseen by a court-appointed monitor since 2019. On a subway ride with THE CITY the day before the election, Mamdani said he was looking forward to “a return to the city’s understanding of its own fiscal responsibilities to NYCHA.”
That message may have resonated with NYCHA residents: Mamdani gained 18 points in election districts that include NYCHA developments — winning 55% of the votes in the general election where he had gotten just 38% in June, when Cuomo took the lead there by 6 points.
He made 30-point improvements in election districts covering 25 of the 335 NYCHA developments. But his biggest gain came in districts that cover Baisley Park Houses in Jamaica, Queens, as well as Glenwood and Woodson Houses in Flatlands and Brownsville, Brooklyn, where he made improvements of 40, 38 and 37 points respectively.
4. Lower-Income Neighborhoods
Mamdani struggled to capture a majority of votes from lower income New Yorkers in the June primary despite his affordability agenda, marked by promises to freeze rent, make buses free and provide universal free child care. But on Tuesday he ultimately took 51% of the votes from neighborhoods where most households make below median income — up 10 points from his 41% there during the primary.
He gained more than 30 points in 12 of these neighborhoods compared to the primary, including Flatlands in Brooklyn, Edenwald, Wakefield, Williamsbridge and Eastchester in The Bronx, as well as South Ozone Park in Queens.
