Mamdani widens lead as New York City mayoral race heats up, poll finds

New York City’s mayoral race is heating up, with Zohran Mamdani, the young progressive who leapt ahead of establishment figures in the primary to win the Democratic party nomination, appeared to widen his lead over his main rivals this week.

Mamdani, 33, edged further ahead of former New York state governor Andrew Cuomo, and incumbent city mayor Eric Adams was far behind, in advance of the election this November to pick a leader for the largest city in the US.

In a metropolis that leans Democratic, he was also far ahead of Republican talkshow host Curtis Sliwa, and also another independent, the sky-diving former federal prosecutor and much less well known Democrat, Jim Walden.

According to a poll released on Tuesday, Mamdani, who has been endorsed by fellow left-wingers on the national stage such as Senator Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, held a 19 point lead over Cuomo, his nearest rival.

It was however, a small scale survey, where the Siena poll sampled just 317 registered voters and cited an unusually wide 6.7% margin of error.

Mamdani is a Muslim, which garnered some negative attacks ahead of the primary, and a member of the Democrat Socialists of America nine-member “State Socialists in Office” bloc in New York’s state assembly.

Cuomo had been expected to win the Democratic primary, but despite his almost universal name recognition, he was beaten after being weighed down by an overly conventional campaign and a damaged political past after resigning as governor in a torrent of accusations of sexual harassment and bullying on the job.

Mamdani was deemed on Tuesday by Siena to be 32 points ahead of Sliwa and held a 37 point lead over Adams, who has been plagued by allegations of corruption and is being pushed closer towards the door by voters after one term.

With Mamdani as the candidate to beat, his credentials are now under attack and he has just four years under his belt as a state legislator. Cuomo has hit Mamdani for living in a rent-stabilized – or rent-regulated – apartment – where the rent is $2,500 a month when the market rate would be $8,000, while he earns $147,000 a year and is campaigning on housing affordability and calling for higher taxes for the wealthiest New Yorkers.

Cuomo has accused Mamdani of “callous theft” and proposed a new means-test law, “Zohran’s Law”, that would control who gets to live in the city’s one million rent-stabilized dwellings. The Mamdani campaign has said their candidate would have met Cuomo’s proposed qualify 30% rent-to-income standard when he moved in and was earning $47,000 a year, and described Cuomo’s proposal as “petty vindictiveness.”

However, Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf said the issue is an opening for New York City voters who are leaning against Mamdani.

“It won’t move the numbers for younger people who are the base of his support, but the argument could benefit both Cuomo and Adams because it makes Mamdani look like a hypocrite,” he said.

Mamdani, meanwhile, has launched a “Five Boroughs Against Trump”, shifting his focus to what many Democratic New Yorkers could agree is the common enemy, the Republican US president.

Trump has threatened to intercede in New York – a threat made vivid with the national guard now patrolling Washington DC’s streets – if Mamdani was elected, and Cuomo posted that that was likely to happen and that “Trump will flatten him like a pancake”.

Sheinkopf said Mamdani’s switch to attacking Trump was a wise political strategy because it deflects from his lack of governing experience. “He can be beaten but the problem is will any of these guys be able to figure it out? Cuomo’s numbers have to be much lower for Adams to win, and Adams has to pick up momentum.

“The only way he [Mamdani] can get the Black vote back is offer a mea culpa that he made some mistakes early on but argue that crime is down, education and job numbers are up, tourist numbers are great, but what I need is more time to make sure 85,000 new housing units already budgeted for come through,” Sheinkopf says.

Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, a state assembly Democrat whose district includes much of East Brooklyn, is among moderates who are coming aroundto the left-winger and attended a Mamdani-led anti-Trump meeting on Tuesday.

“Democrats, both moderate and progressive, are uniting around urgent issues like affordability, housing, and protecting our democracy,” Hermelyn said.