Six months ago, the name Zohran Mamdani would’ve drawn blank stares from most New Yorkers.
Now, the 34-year-old socialist firebrand is on the brink of seizing City Hall in a political earthquake powered by TikTok.
‘He just seems like such a dude,’ masters student Johnny Mulcahy, 22, told the Daily Mail in Manhattan hours before polls opened on Tuesday.
The New York assemblyman has generated a cult-like following, with fans gushing over his dreamy looks, music videos, and progressive plans to make one of America’s most expensive cities affordable.
Despite concerns from Wall Street and a recent Daily Mail poll showing up to 750,000 people will flee the Big Apple if he wins, Mamdani has a commanding lead against his closest rival, former Democratic New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.
This publication’s polling found a further 25 percent, or 2.12 million, would ‘consider’ leaving NYC in the event of a Mamdani win – an exodus that could cripple the city’s economy and send shockwaves across the country.
But Mamdani’s sweeping promises to freeze rents and slash transportation costs have turned him into the hero of the city’s youth.
Zohran Mamdani has a clear lead in the race to be the next mayor of New York City
‘I saw him at the club yesterday, and I think he’s so relatable to everyone our age,’ 19-year-old Hillary Machuca said Monday morning about Mamdani on the eve of election day
‘Mamdani just seems like such a dude,’ said NYU masters student Johnny Mulcahy, 22, pictured left with his friend Connor Burns, 23, a recent NYU graduate
Zohran made one last push to get out the youth vote over the weekend and did a tour of New York City’s clubs
If he secures the landslide victory predicted on Tuesday night, it will likely be thanks to Gen Z and millennial voters – despite deep concern from their parents and grandparents who remember the crime-ridden, cash-strapped Big Apple of the 1970s and 1980s.
Even though Mamdani hails from a wealthy family – his parents own a luxury compound in Uganda – the younger generation finds him far more relatable than his rivals.
The exclusive poll for the Daily Mail by JL Partners found 55 percent of 18 to 29-year-olds are backing Mamdani, compared to 32 percent of 55 to 64-year-olds.
Among 30 to 39-year-olds, 62 percent said they will cast their vote for the candidate who has promised to raise taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers to pay for his ambitious plans.
Meanwhile, just 32 percent of over-65-year-olds, who have lived in the city through some of its darkest times, have vowed to back Mamdani.
Affordability is the cornerstone of his surge in support, with voters aged 30 to 49 most hopeful that he can bring down New York’s sky-high rents.
And in the Daily Mail’s poll, voters said housing affordability is the only policy they believe Mamdani will be able to improve during his tenure.
But it is the plans and ideas, which could cost the city and taxpayers millions, that have won the hearts and minds of hordes of Gen Zs.
Bronx-born rapper Johnny Vudoe, 26, agreed that Mamdani appears to better represent ordinary New Yorkers more than any of his rivals. ‘I f*** with Zohran,’ Vudoe said
Psychology student Ella Ehrke, 19, said she has been won over by Mamdani’s club appearances and pledges to reduce the ‘atrocious’ cost of public transport
Older New Yorkers fear Mamdani’s hard-left policies could return the city to its broke, crime-ridden past. New York is pictured here in the early 1980s
‘I’m really for his plan to make the buses free here in New York City, because I think that it’s actually atrocious that the subway is $3,’ 19-year-old psychology student Ella Ehrke told the Daily Mail.
‘It’s disgusting and gross and it’s crazy that we have to pay that much,’ she added.
It’s no surprise then that Mamdani spent the final hours of his campaign leaning into this younger demographic.
He spent the weekend touring Brooklyn’s nightclubs with videos showing him stirring up screaming fans with dance floor stump speeches – urging them to get out the vote (but also to have fun).
He’s also found an unsurprising following among left-wing celebrity influencers with gushing Instagram posts from the likes of Ilana Glazer, Emily Ratajkowski and the knitting influencer stepdaughter of Kamala Harris, Ella Emhoff.
Hillary Machua, 19, told the Daily Mail: ‘I saw him at the club yesterday, and I think he’s so relatable to everyone our age.
‘He’s so real. Even though he has no experience compared to [Republican candidate Curtis] Sliwa and Cuomo man, he’s so down to earth – and I’ve seen him taking the subway places,’ she added.
‘I was reading about how he wants to make community markets to bring down prices of the groceries.
Brooklyn-born Chelsea, 20, also said Mamdani’s transportation policies had won her vote
El Mahdi Youssoufi, 27, said his parents moved to the US from Morocco, and although he cannot vote, Mamdani is his favorite candidate due to his cost of living policies
‘Especially because we’re all in college here and we don’t have a job – we all rely on our parents’ money, maybe – I feel like if the prices are going to go down, it will benefit us all.
‘I have nothing bad to say about [Andrew] Cuomo and the other guy [Curtis Silwa] – I’ve just only seen Mamdani on my TikTok.’
Recent NYU graduate Connor Burns said he felt that Mamdani was the only ‘relatable’ candidate for the younger generation.
‘Being a young person living in an incredibly expensive city, it’s hard to find hope that you can make it work, and he has instilled that hope in a lot of people,’ Burns said.
The 23-year-old Colorado transplant added that his conservative parents vehemently disagree – illustrating the ‘generational divide’ over Mamdani.
Bronx-born rapper Johnny Vudoe, 26, agreed that Mamdani appears to better represent ordinary New Yorkers more than any other candidate.
‘I f*** with Zohran,’ Vudoe said. ‘He’s from Queens, he used to rap, he definitely gives me Queens type of dude, so I respect him for that, but I know that people like him tend to come from parents with money’.
However, Vudoe said he is concerned that under Mamdani’s socialist leadership, his home city could descend into the homelessness, open drug taking and squalor seen in soft-on-crime liberal cities like San Francisco and Portland.
Andrew Cuomo is lagging behind Mamdani in the mayoral race
Republican Curtis Sliwa is refusing to drop out of the race to help Cuomo
The recent Daily Mail poll with JL Partners found that even Mamdani’s supporters are worried about the city’s future under his leadership.
His own supporters think he will make antisemitism in New York worse, rather than better.
Mamdani, who is Muslim, has been one of the Democrat party’s staunchest critics of Israel. He has even vowed to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu if the Israeli Prime Minister visits New York and he is mayor.
That has spooked many Jews still distraught from Hamas’s October 2023 terror attack on Israeli that killed more than 1,200, with NYC home to one of the world’s largest Jewish communities.
Asked for one word to describe what the Big Apple would be like after four years of his left-wing policies, the most common response from non-Mamdani voters was ‘disaster.’
They also said a Mamdani-run New York would be ‘chaos,’ ‘hell,’ ‘broken,’ and a ‘s***hole.’
‘I am very left-leaning. I’ve studied Marxism, socialism, all these things, but I’m questioning these things being put into practice,’ Vudoe added.
‘We’ve seen on the West Coast, the Bay Area, Oakland, and how they’ve been affected by this political discourse,’ he added, referring to unfettered immigration and a more laid-back approach to policing.
Mamdani (center) with Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at a campaign rally at Forest Hills Stadium in the Queens, New York, on Monday
Many New Yorkers fear crime will spiral if Mamdani takes over City Hall
A 1985 protest in New York City over the death of graffiti artist Michael Stewart at the hands of New York transit police officers
‘Freedom for the people, I’m for, but is it really beneficial to the working class?’
New York University media student Matthew Singh, 22, from upstate New York, admitted he has concerns about Mamdani’s crime policies – including social workers dealing with 911 calls instead of police – but insisted they were only ‘minor’.
‘A call could look like a mental health crisis but then it could quickly become something that requires police,’ Singh explained, while outlining his opposition to sending social workers to domestic incidents instead of armed cops.
‘But, I think Mamdani appeals to a lot of New Yorkers because he’s a genuine voice, he’s young, he’s vibrant.
‘During Halloween, he was going out, he was going to clubs, he was bar hopping, he was doing what the young people like.
‘He’s connecting with voters, he’s more personable than Andrew Cuomo, so I think that appeals to a lot of New Yorkers, especially young ones.’
Many of Mamdani’s most eye-catching policies must be approved by New York state lawmakers in Albany, who have given little indication that they are keen to help the young lawmaker realize his ambitions.
Some 19 percent of people said they did not think Mamdani would make a difference to the New York housing crisis, while 10 percent said they were unsure.
Actress Emily Ratajowski is among stars backing Mamdani. She posed with the mayoral candidate ahead of the Democratic primary in June and has continues to support him
Comedienne Ilana Glazer has also come out in support of Mamdani and insists she is one of many Jews very excited by the prospect of him winning the mayoral election
However, on all other policy issues, including crime, business, terrorism and anti-Semitism, voters felt like Mamdani would worsen the outlook in the city.
But the message was clear among young voters in Manhattan on the eve of election day – they want to see major improvements to the cost of living in the city, even if such aspirations seem like a pipe dream.
‘Mamdani has given such a grand projection of what this city could be,’ Mulcahy told the Daily Mail as he sat with Burns in Washington Square Park.
‘I think that’s really inspiring for young people – that trajectory of prosperity.’
‘I’ve rarely seen a campaign that has given me such hope for the future,’ Burns agreed.