I’m surprised that his national numbers are even this, considering the Republican Party, and leading Dems, have been calling him a “terrorist who wants to carry out jihad.” I’m being quite literal here Kristen Gillbrand (National NY Dem leader) said he wants to carry out global jihad and Megyn Kelly (one of the saner right wing personalities) called him a literal terrorist. Cuomo’s recent press conference was with Eric Adams saying he doesn’t want NYC to be “become like European cities run by Muslim extremists.”
The reason people are talking about him so much is not only because NYC journalists live there but because he’s the only Dem politician since Obama who has such charisma and can hold his own even in hostile settings.
This analysis seems pointless at this point, impossible to disentangle his racial and personal profile to gauge any ideological or communication lessons.
It seems like people are talking about him so much, because he makes controversial statements? In today’s media landscape that’s a great way to cut through the noise. Every time he makes a statement like that he doesn’t condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada”, it gets a full news cycle from both republicans and democrats. The problem is it doesn’t exactly make you popular, it just captures a lot of attention.
His position on Israel-Palestine is more left wing than I’m comfortable with but in every interview I’ve seen of him, he’s trying to avoid talking about it. I recently saw him on Flagrant and they were provoking him to talk about how obsessed establishment is about Israel and he didn’t take the bait and said even though it’s been weaponized against him, he understands antisemitism is a real concern. He was asked about the intifada phrase, he never used it.
He made the “intifada” statement in June. Just in the past 2 weeks, he wouldn’t say on Fox whether Hamas should disarm. Just last week he went to Brooklyn to do a photo op with Imam Siraj Wahhaj who is connected with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing case.
I agree with this - the national electorate is responding to caricatures of Mamdani when he himself is not speaking to them in any meaningful way. Anecdotally, the gulf of opinions on Mamdani between my left-of-center friends who live in NYC versus my left-of-center friends who live elsewhere is massive, and understandably so - it's a mayoral race! Those outside of NYC just broadly know him as a socialist who wants to give away free shit, and they are correctly intuiting that that's generally a bad thing to do in politics. He comes across as infinitely more likable and charming if you're actually an NYC voter who is inclined to tune in to what he has to say. On the slip side, as a non-Chicagoan my feelings about Brandon Johnson are largely negative. But folks from Chicago absolutely despise him to a degree I myself could never emotionally achieve without actually living there. This asymmetry makes total sense!
Trying to gauge a hyper-local politician's popularity nationwide - especially one where the opposition is disproportionately inclined to talk more about him - is a pretty silly endeavor IMO. I think there are plenty of valid reasons to not use Mamdani as a template for national Democratic success (mostly because he's insanely left wing and that's a great way to lose in a conservative-leaning country), but this data does not appear to be the persuasive way to make that case.
Yes I have enjoyed prior polling work but this just seems like very tortured and shoddy analysis to score points against leftists who annoy you on Twitter. The conclusion and thesis seems too strong with irrelevant comparisons and not enough controls and adjustment of different variables. It’s just too early he isn’t even mayor yet.
To me the obvious takeaway is that Zohran's locally-resonant messaging is driving popularity. "I live in Queens and know NYC unaffordability personally" doesn't resonate outside of the tristate area. Every single one of his ads and messages that I've seen centers borough-specific identity. He has otherwise been an unknown canvas that has easily been painted in traditionally partisan ways one would expect.
I get that this popularity comparison to national figures is a classical analytical angle to take, I just don't put a lot of stock in it given Mamdani's lack of prior candidate profile and hyper-local messaging.
The notion that commentators shouldn't rush to draw wide-reaching conclusions from Mamdani's primary victory is fair, but the conclusion of this article that Democrats have absolutely nothing to learn here seems equally hasty and unfounded.
Mamdani has simply not been in the conversation as long as AOC, Schumer and Newsom have. This is an apples-to-oranges comparison. Even in your first graph it's clear he just has the highest share of respondents who don't have an opinion.
Regardless, he won the primary and is on track to win the general - that seems more important to me, and the Democrats, than what respondents outside his electorate who have no stake in his election think about him.
Allowing a popular winner to emerge from a legitimately competitive primary, not obsessively channeling their communications through consultancies, allowing new policy proposals to compete in the marketplace of ideas - those all seem like very good lessons to learn here. I'm not sure how national favorability ratings have anything to do with this.
The article doesn't say they have nothing to learn from him — just that the lessons are really not as broad as people believe they are. And re: the AOC point, I see what you're saying but that's why we took a look at AOC's favorables throughout her career. She's always been stronger than this.
National favorability ratings do tell us a bit about how candidates are perceived in general and if platforming them nationally and taking broad lessons is a good idea. People want Jeffries to endorse Zohran. That would be a very bad idea.
I agree that nationally platforming Mamdani is a bad idea, though not because of his favorability ratings but because our obsession with nationalizing every figure and every issue has been terrible for local democracy and practical problem-solving.
It would also be equally bad for Jeffries to endorse Mamdani if his favorability ratings happened to be high.
"The reason Mamdani is on course to comfortably win the mayoral election is really quite simple: He has the Democratic Party line in a city that is extremely Democratic, and the opposition is split between an … eccentric Republican and an unpopular, scandal-plagued former governor, leaving Mamdani few obstacles to victory."
To be fair, he emerged as a no-namer out of a very crowded primary, while other more accomplished normie candidates did not. I think that's what people are giving him credit for. An inanimate carbon rod would win over Cuomo and Sliwa at this point.
I think Mamdani's rise is a little over sold. He played the inside game in the primary and immediately won over a block of voters that were looking for a candidate (WFP and DSA). Once he won that block, he had 15-25% of the Dem primary voters. From that base, he was able to grow the electorate in a lot of ways including reaching out to Muslim voters who generally never vote. He deserves a ton of credit for his campaign, but the "polling at 1%" narrative is over sold.
I was telling people in March that the Democratic Primary was a race between Cuomo and Mamdani.
I'm reluctantly voting for Cuomo despite disliking both candidates because I think Mamdani is worse. I know other people who are reluctantly voting for Mamdani for the same reason. Don't assume that everyone who votes for Mamdani is particularly excited about it. There aren't great alternatives. He wouldn't be where he is if that wasn't the case.
Same boat. I'll hold my nose and vote for one of them when the time comes but there are no good options. I'd caution the larger Dem party to be careful about what lessons they think they may learn from this election.
I have had bad personal experiences with Cuomo. He's a horrible person. At the end of the day though, I am going to vote on what is best for my family. I think that Cuomo will likely hold NYC together in a difficult time. He is at his best when he is responding to crisis and NYC is facing several crisis.
That said, Mamdani is likely going to be mayor. He is not as ideological and egotistical as de Blasio, so there is hope he will be pragmatic.
I think the main lesson to take from Zohran is that there are methods to get disengaged people to vote in local races and other people can and should try to use those methods.
Let's be specific. Mamdani showed that there are ways to get people to vote in a Democratic primary in a very blue city, in ways that may or may not hurt him in the general. Everything else is extrapolation that hasn't been backed up by evidence.
How do your surveys show Mamdani doing with demographics democrats struggled with in 2024? I feel like a lot of the takes saying that democrats should learn from him are focused on how he reaches those demos specifically. You can still glean some lessons from his campaign if he’s doing well with those people, even if those lessons are narrow in scope.
Of course, thats dependent on him actually doing well with those groups. People seem to be reaching that conclusion largely on vibes, so some data would be nice.
I worry about Mamdani. He reminds me, in a way, of another mayor that we here in NYC had once, by the name of Bill de Blasio.
I actually met de Blasio, in person, while standing in line for SummerStage at the Prospect Park Bandshell, during the season before the 2013 election.
And he scared the hell out of me.
De Blasio was a highly — I mean highly — energetic middle-aged man who spoke loudly, in a clear and authoritative voice while engaging ordinary people at close range. He looked like he was 6' 10" tall (I actually don't know how tall he is) and towered over everyone, including me. I didn't know who he was at the time — not yet — whether he was crazy, or even whether he was someone who I should have been… um… *worried* about (if you know what I mean). He was standing about 10 feet from me.
I listened to him speak. His energy was the same energy I recognize now, while I see and hear Mamdani. His ideas were absolutely right on, in my opinion, although they seemed out-of-the-box, compared with what we'd been hearing for basically our whole lives from every liberal Democrat before him. No one brought up our economic issues, for example, in the same way he did — and the man had *enthusiasm* (as stated), along with *years* of experience in local politics as a member of the City Council, and as Public Advocate. One had a sense that, yes, this guy was legit — and, yes, he could really accomplish what he was proposing. His main competition that year was Anthony Weiner, who was a national figure — but also someone, like Andrew Cuomo at the present moment, who New Yorkers thought was a complete wanker. Based on his enthusiasm, his "good enough" credentials and, most importantly, his message, de Blaso rolled from something like a 4% support level, all the way past Weiner, and all the way into the Mayor's office.
And then?
And then it turned out, aside from the legitimately useful (and valuable) pre-kindergarten program he promised, that he actually *couldn't* deliver what he'd campaigned on after all — despite what I still think was our well-placed confidence in his abilities. People began to hate him and weren't going to vote for another democratic socialist to replace him — no matter what — and declined to elect Maya Wiley (a very good candidate IMO), in favor of… Eric Adams.
This is the future of a Mamdani mayorship which I dread, and which I actually sort of expect. Mamdani has *significantly* less experience in politics than de Blasio — especially at the local level, here in NYC, where that sort of thing really matters. He talks a lot of… talk. He's got big, bold — some would say "outlandish" — proposals for the City, which extend beyond even de Blasio's ambitions. I wonder — I *worry* — I worry about just how he expects to establish a chain of City owned and operated *grocery stores*, for example. How will he muster political support within the public sector for such an investment? Who within our established political system will choose to spend the sum of money needed to… needed to oppose the highly influential (and powerful) private sector in this business — a business with Mamdani knows *nothing* about.
This is just one example among many of Mamdani's proposals which makes me worried that, if he were elected, his leadership would be so disappointing to New Yorkers — and voters nationwide, by extension — that we would avoid all democratic socialists for the next decade or more, viewing them as either pie-in-the-sky dreamers, at best, or else as pathologically lying demagogues, at worst.
…
The larger question of whether Democrats should embrace less liberalism and more socialism has a lot to do, I think, with the credibility of the socialist messenger and advocate, compared with the overall expectations of our liberal socioeconomic system, which is very much a known quantity. Socialism is a new concept in American politics, except as a target of capitalist propaganda, which it's been for the past 100+ years. Not enough Democrats — not enough Americans — understand what socialism actually is, well enough to trust it. A credible messenger is therefore critical in this regard. Mamdani may be enthusiastic and even persuasive but, as your poll results verify, he is not *credible*.
The other side of this question is the *undeniable* unpopularity of liberalism in 2025. It should very much worry liberals that something like a third of more of Democrats now prefer socialism. It should worry liberals so much more that nearly 100% of formerly liberal-conservative Republicans now favor *fascism* over liberalism. Decades of exploitation and wealth-siphoning by rich *liberal* individuals and big businesses have alienated — and angered — the public. Those who have yet to abandon liberalism are simply those whose irritation with the system has *yet* to exceed their familiarity and comfort with it.
Liberalism has been shedding support since 2008, and has shed more than an entire major political party since 2016. To avoid losing a bare plurality within the Democratic Party — enough to field candidates for office — liberals will need to change something. The most reasonable direction to shift toward is socialism. Socialism is more reasonable than fascism, as I hope we all agree. Everyone will hopefully also agree that communism, as another option, is completely out of the question (as it should be).
Liberals need to look past unreliable messengers like Mamdani to find a path toward democratic socialism. The alternative is to shrink so far in support as to become the sort of minority political philosophy which liberalism is in countries like the UK or in Germany, where support for liberal political parties usually peak at around 10%. Were this to happen, one should expect a lot of erstwhile liberals to migrate toward socialism anyway — along with a critical, catastrophic hemorrhage to the far right, which would establish fascism as the new dominant political philosophy in the United States.
You are conflating what "liberalism" is with what voters think "liberalism" is. Which is probably closer to "socialism" or "leftism" or "communism" because those labels have been associated with the liberal party.
Liberal principles such as freedom of expression and private property rights are still among the most popular ideas in American politics, but the word "liberalism" has been associated with the Democrats, which is then guilty by association with all the other baggage the national party has.
Disagree about the whole liberalism vs. socialism thing, but good takes on de Blasio, who not only had much more experience than Mamdani but also a much better fiscal situation. He got reelected, but it didn't end particularly well for him.
Voters like the focus on consumer prices (finally!), but where Mamdani and economic populists miss the mark is they think voters want to have affordability issues resolved through government entitlements. Free busses. Free childcare.
Economic populists assume that the working class has a meek orientation toward their economic prospects and they want a government handout to get them over the hump. Americans hate to be on the receiving end of charity! A huge part of our culture is rugged individualism and self-sufficiency. Surveys on voters perspective on their own economic prospects bear this out.
If you want to test this experimentally, offer 5 of your friends $20 and say its because "you look like you need the help". At the end you will have all 5 $20s, and less than 5 friends.
Mamdani is inheriting a city with a massive budget crisis and a host of structural problems. He is going to basically have 90 days to get an agenda passed by the state legislature in the budget. If he fails to get help from Albany, he is going to be a one-term mayor.
Roughly 500,000 apartments are in financial distress / bankruptcy. The cost of rescuing these buildings is going to be like $2b annually. That's money the city won't have because the federal government is scaling back its funding to the state. Also, the economy is slowing due to tariffs.
He will be forced to be an austerity mayor and he is going to preside over a city in decline. And he is going to get blasted by the GOP for destroying NYC for years.
That said... if he can somehow deliver affordability and prosperity for NYC in the face of the Trump administration, they will build statues for him.
There's a large faction of the online left that keeps harping on the idea that Mamdani shows Democrats don't need to moderate in swing districts to win, they just need rizz, social media savvy, and an inspiring platform. This polling suggests that no, just running the Mamdani playbook outside of New York probably doesn't work.
The Republican Party collapsed in 2016 after years of attention algorithm insurgency and to the extent Mamdani means anything it’s that the New York Democratic Party has, and the national Democratic Party will, collapse in the same way in the near future. We have government by Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok masquerading as democracy.
I wish this had included a few more Dems, especially those most likely to run in 2028 such as Pete and Pritzker. Those two also seem much less controversial and are more likely to have positive favorability than Newsom and AOC.
I’m surprised that his national numbers are even this, considering the Republican Party, and leading Dems, have been calling him a “terrorist who wants to carry out jihad.” I’m being quite literal here Kristen Gillbrand (National NY Dem leader) said he wants to carry out global jihad and Megyn Kelly (one of the saner right wing personalities) called him a literal terrorist. Cuomo’s recent press conference was with Eric Adams saying he doesn’t want NYC to be “become like European cities run by Muslim extremists.”
The reason people are talking about him so much is not only because NYC journalists live there but because he’s the only Dem politician since Obama who has such charisma and can hold his own even in hostile settings.
This analysis seems pointless at this point, impossible to disentangle his racial and personal profile to gauge any ideological or communication lessons.
It seems like people are talking about him so much, because he makes controversial statements? In today’s media landscape that’s a great way to cut through the noise. Every time he makes a statement like that he doesn’t condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada”, it gets a full news cycle from both republicans and democrats. The problem is it doesn’t exactly make you popular, it just captures a lot of attention.
His position on Israel-Palestine is more left wing than I’m comfortable with but in every interview I’ve seen of him, he’s trying to avoid talking about it. I recently saw him on Flagrant and they were provoking him to talk about how obsessed establishment is about Israel and he didn’t take the bait and said even though it’s been weaponized against him, he understands antisemitism is a real concern. He was asked about the intifada phrase, he never used it.
His refusal to disavow it strongly implies that he supports it
When was the last time he actually made a statement like that? A year before his campaign began?
He made the “intifada” statement in June. Just in the past 2 weeks, he wouldn’t say on Fox whether Hamas should disarm. Just last week he went to Brooklyn to do a photo op with Imam Siraj Wahhaj who is connected with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing case.
I agree with this - the national electorate is responding to caricatures of Mamdani when he himself is not speaking to them in any meaningful way. Anecdotally, the gulf of opinions on Mamdani between my left-of-center friends who live in NYC versus my left-of-center friends who live elsewhere is massive, and understandably so - it's a mayoral race! Those outside of NYC just broadly know him as a socialist who wants to give away free shit, and they are correctly intuiting that that's generally a bad thing to do in politics. He comes across as infinitely more likable and charming if you're actually an NYC voter who is inclined to tune in to what he has to say. On the slip side, as a non-Chicagoan my feelings about Brandon Johnson are largely negative. But folks from Chicago absolutely despise him to a degree I myself could never emotionally achieve without actually living there. This asymmetry makes total sense!
Trying to gauge a hyper-local politician's popularity nationwide - especially one where the opposition is disproportionately inclined to talk more about him - is a pretty silly endeavor IMO. I think there are plenty of valid reasons to not use Mamdani as a template for national Democratic success (mostly because he's insanely left wing and that's a great way to lose in a conservative-leaning country), but this data does not appear to be the persuasive way to make that case.
Yes I have enjoyed prior polling work but this just seems like very tortured and shoddy analysis to score points against leftists who annoy you on Twitter. The conclusion and thesis seems too strong with irrelevant comparisons and not enough controls and adjustment of different variables. It’s just too early he isn’t even mayor yet.
To me the obvious takeaway is that Zohran's locally-resonant messaging is driving popularity. "I live in Queens and know NYC unaffordability personally" doesn't resonate outside of the tristate area. Every single one of his ads and messages that I've seen centers borough-specific identity. He has otherwise been an unknown canvas that has easily been painted in traditionally partisan ways one would expect.
I get that this popularity comparison to national figures is a classical analytical angle to take, I just don't put a lot of stock in it given Mamdani's lack of prior candidate profile and hyper-local messaging.
I think that’s fine but he’s not even that popular in NYC, relative to the city’s partisanship.
The notion that commentators shouldn't rush to draw wide-reaching conclusions from Mamdani's primary victory is fair, but the conclusion of this article that Democrats have absolutely nothing to learn here seems equally hasty and unfounded.
Mamdani has simply not been in the conversation as long as AOC, Schumer and Newsom have. This is an apples-to-oranges comparison. Even in your first graph it's clear he just has the highest share of respondents who don't have an opinion.
Regardless, he won the primary and is on track to win the general - that seems more important to me, and the Democrats, than what respondents outside his electorate who have no stake in his election think about him.
Allowing a popular winner to emerge from a legitimately competitive primary, not obsessively channeling their communications through consultancies, allowing new policy proposals to compete in the marketplace of ideas - those all seem like very good lessons to learn here. I'm not sure how national favorability ratings have anything to do with this.
The article doesn't say they have nothing to learn from him — just that the lessons are really not as broad as people believe they are. And re: the AOC point, I see what you're saying but that's why we took a look at AOC's favorables throughout her career. She's always been stronger than this.
National favorability ratings do tell us a bit about how candidates are perceived in general and if platforming them nationally and taking broad lessons is a good idea. People want Jeffries to endorse Zohran. That would be a very bad idea.
I agree that nationally platforming Mamdani is a bad idea, though not because of his favorability ratings but because our obsession with nationalizing every figure and every issue has been terrible for local democracy and practical problem-solving.
It would also be equally bad for Jeffries to endorse Mamdani if his favorability ratings happened to be high.
"The reason Mamdani is on course to comfortably win the mayoral election is really quite simple: He has the Democratic Party line in a city that is extremely Democratic, and the opposition is split between an … eccentric Republican and an unpopular, scandal-plagued former governor, leaving Mamdani few obstacles to victory."
To be fair, he emerged as a no-namer out of a very crowded primary, while other more accomplished normie candidates did not. I think that's what people are giving him credit for. An inanimate carbon rod would win over Cuomo and Sliwa at this point.
I think Mamdani's rise is a little over sold. He played the inside game in the primary and immediately won over a block of voters that were looking for a candidate (WFP and DSA). Once he won that block, he had 15-25% of the Dem primary voters. From that base, he was able to grow the electorate in a lot of ways including reaching out to Muslim voters who generally never vote. He deserves a ton of credit for his campaign, but the "polling at 1%" narrative is over sold.
I was telling people in March that the Democratic Primary was a race between Cuomo and Mamdani.
I don't really disagree with any of this. Just saying it could have been Brad Lander we're talking about right now. But we aren't!
I'm reluctantly voting for Cuomo despite disliking both candidates because I think Mamdani is worse. I know other people who are reluctantly voting for Mamdani for the same reason. Don't assume that everyone who votes for Mamdani is particularly excited about it. There aren't great alternatives. He wouldn't be where he is if that wasn't the case.
Same boat. I'll hold my nose and vote for one of them when the time comes but there are no good options. I'd caution the larger Dem party to be careful about what lessons they think they may learn from this election.
I have had bad personal experiences with Cuomo. He's a horrible person. At the end of the day though, I am going to vote on what is best for my family. I think that Cuomo will likely hold NYC together in a difficult time. He is at his best when he is responding to crisis and NYC is facing several crisis.
That said, Mamdani is likely going to be mayor. He is not as ideological and egotistical as de Blasio, so there is hope he will be pragmatic.
I think the main lesson to take from Zohran is that there are methods to get disengaged people to vote in local races and other people can and should try to use those methods.
Let's be specific. Mamdani showed that there are ways to get people to vote in a Democratic primary in a very blue city, in ways that may or may not hurt him in the general. Everything else is extrapolation that hasn't been backed up by evidence.
How do your surveys show Mamdani doing with demographics democrats struggled with in 2024? I feel like a lot of the takes saying that democrats should learn from him are focused on how he reaches those demos specifically. You can still glean some lessons from his campaign if he’s doing well with those people, even if those lessons are narrow in scope.
Of course, thats dependent on him actually doing well with those groups. People seem to be reaching that conclusion largely on vibes, so some data would be nice.
I worry about Mamdani. He reminds me, in a way, of another mayor that we here in NYC had once, by the name of Bill de Blasio.
I actually met de Blasio, in person, while standing in line for SummerStage at the Prospect Park Bandshell, during the season before the 2013 election.
And he scared the hell out of me.
De Blasio was a highly — I mean highly — energetic middle-aged man who spoke loudly, in a clear and authoritative voice while engaging ordinary people at close range. He looked like he was 6' 10" tall (I actually don't know how tall he is) and towered over everyone, including me. I didn't know who he was at the time — not yet — whether he was crazy, or even whether he was someone who I should have been… um… *worried* about (if you know what I mean). He was standing about 10 feet from me.
I listened to him speak. His energy was the same energy I recognize now, while I see and hear Mamdani. His ideas were absolutely right on, in my opinion, although they seemed out-of-the-box, compared with what we'd been hearing for basically our whole lives from every liberal Democrat before him. No one brought up our economic issues, for example, in the same way he did — and the man had *enthusiasm* (as stated), along with *years* of experience in local politics as a member of the City Council, and as Public Advocate. One had a sense that, yes, this guy was legit — and, yes, he could really accomplish what he was proposing. His main competition that year was Anthony Weiner, who was a national figure — but also someone, like Andrew Cuomo at the present moment, who New Yorkers thought was a complete wanker. Based on his enthusiasm, his "good enough" credentials and, most importantly, his message, de Blaso rolled from something like a 4% support level, all the way past Weiner, and all the way into the Mayor's office.
And then?
And then it turned out, aside from the legitimately useful (and valuable) pre-kindergarten program he promised, that he actually *couldn't* deliver what he'd campaigned on after all — despite what I still think was our well-placed confidence in his abilities. People began to hate him and weren't going to vote for another democratic socialist to replace him — no matter what — and declined to elect Maya Wiley (a very good candidate IMO), in favor of… Eric Adams.
This is the future of a Mamdani mayorship which I dread, and which I actually sort of expect. Mamdani has *significantly* less experience in politics than de Blasio — especially at the local level, here in NYC, where that sort of thing really matters. He talks a lot of… talk. He's got big, bold — some would say "outlandish" — proposals for the City, which extend beyond even de Blasio's ambitions. I wonder — I *worry* — I worry about just how he expects to establish a chain of City owned and operated *grocery stores*, for example. How will he muster political support within the public sector for such an investment? Who within our established political system will choose to spend the sum of money needed to… needed to oppose the highly influential (and powerful) private sector in this business — a business with Mamdani knows *nothing* about.
This is just one example among many of Mamdani's proposals which makes me worried that, if he were elected, his leadership would be so disappointing to New Yorkers — and voters nationwide, by extension — that we would avoid all democratic socialists for the next decade or more, viewing them as either pie-in-the-sky dreamers, at best, or else as pathologically lying demagogues, at worst.
…
The larger question of whether Democrats should embrace less liberalism and more socialism has a lot to do, I think, with the credibility of the socialist messenger and advocate, compared with the overall expectations of our liberal socioeconomic system, which is very much a known quantity. Socialism is a new concept in American politics, except as a target of capitalist propaganda, which it's been for the past 100+ years. Not enough Democrats — not enough Americans — understand what socialism actually is, well enough to trust it. A credible messenger is therefore critical in this regard. Mamdani may be enthusiastic and even persuasive but, as your poll results verify, he is not *credible*.
The other side of this question is the *undeniable* unpopularity of liberalism in 2025. It should very much worry liberals that something like a third of more of Democrats now prefer socialism. It should worry liberals so much more that nearly 100% of formerly liberal-conservative Republicans now favor *fascism* over liberalism. Decades of exploitation and wealth-siphoning by rich *liberal* individuals and big businesses have alienated — and angered — the public. Those who have yet to abandon liberalism are simply those whose irritation with the system has *yet* to exceed their familiarity and comfort with it.
Liberalism has been shedding support since 2008, and has shed more than an entire major political party since 2016. To avoid losing a bare plurality within the Democratic Party — enough to field candidates for office — liberals will need to change something. The most reasonable direction to shift toward is socialism. Socialism is more reasonable than fascism, as I hope we all agree. Everyone will hopefully also agree that communism, as another option, is completely out of the question (as it should be).
Liberals need to look past unreliable messengers like Mamdani to find a path toward democratic socialism. The alternative is to shrink so far in support as to become the sort of minority political philosophy which liberalism is in countries like the UK or in Germany, where support for liberal political parties usually peak at around 10%. Were this to happen, one should expect a lot of erstwhile liberals to migrate toward socialism anyway — along with a critical, catastrophic hemorrhage to the far right, which would establish fascism as the new dominant political philosophy in the United States.
These are the stakes.
You are conflating what "liberalism" is with what voters think "liberalism" is. Which is probably closer to "socialism" or "leftism" or "communism" because those labels have been associated with the liberal party.
Liberal principles such as freedom of expression and private property rights are still among the most popular ideas in American politics, but the word "liberalism" has been associated with the Democrats, which is then guilty by association with all the other baggage the national party has.
Disagree about the whole liberalism vs. socialism thing, but good takes on de Blasio, who not only had much more experience than Mamdani but also a much better fiscal situation. He got reelected, but it didn't end particularly well for him.
Voters like the focus on consumer prices (finally!), but where Mamdani and economic populists miss the mark is they think voters want to have affordability issues resolved through government entitlements. Free busses. Free childcare.
Economic populists assume that the working class has a meek orientation toward their economic prospects and they want a government handout to get them over the hump. Americans hate to be on the receiving end of charity! A huge part of our culture is rugged individualism and self-sufficiency. Surveys on voters perspective on their own economic prospects bear this out.
If you want to test this experimentally, offer 5 of your friends $20 and say its because "you look like you need the help". At the end you will have all 5 $20s, and less than 5 friends.
Mamdani is inheriting a city with a massive budget crisis and a host of structural problems. He is going to basically have 90 days to get an agenda passed by the state legislature in the budget. If he fails to get help from Albany, he is going to be a one-term mayor.
Roughly 500,000 apartments are in financial distress / bankruptcy. The cost of rescuing these buildings is going to be like $2b annually. That's money the city won't have because the federal government is scaling back its funding to the state. Also, the economy is slowing due to tariffs.
He will be forced to be an austerity mayor and he is going to preside over a city in decline. And he is going to get blasted by the GOP for destroying NYC for years.
That said... if he can somehow deliver affordability and prosperity for NYC in the face of the Trump administration, they will build statues for him.
Who cares?
There's a large faction of the online left that keeps harping on the idea that Mamdani shows Democrats don't need to moderate in swing districts to win, they just need rizz, social media savvy, and an inspiring platform. This polling suggests that no, just running the Mamdani playbook outside of New York probably doesn't work.
“Bernie Sanders’ insurgent 2016 victory”?
Weird, that was actually already fixed a while back, I guess substack had a cached copy or didn’t register our draft save? thanks for the flag.
His focus on cost of living is good.
But all his big proposals are wrong On the merits.
Moreover he's almost certainly an anti semite
He shouldn't be anywhere near the levers of power
The Republican Party collapsed in 2016 after years of attention algorithm insurgency and to the extent Mamdani means anything it’s that the New York Democratic Party has, and the national Democratic Party will, collapse in the same way in the near future. We have government by Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok masquerading as democracy.
I wish this had included a few more Dems, especially those most likely to run in 2028 such as Pete and Pritzker. Those two also seem much less controversial and are more likely to have positive favorability than Newsom and AOC.
Wow, this polling kinda shows the Democrats could be getting on the Kamala Train one more time to run it back for '28.