Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City on Tuesday, capping a stunning ascent for the 34-year-old state lawmaker, who was set to become the city’s most liberal mayor in generations.

In a victory for the Democratic party’s progressive wing, Mamdani defeated former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa. Mamdani must now navigate the unending demands of America’s biggest city and deliver on ambitious — skeptics say unrealistic — campaign promises.

With the victory, the democratic socialist will etch his place in history as the city’s first Muslim mayor, the first of South Asian heritage and the first born in Africa. He will also become the city’s youngest mayor in more than a century when he takes office on Jan. 1.

  • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    16
    ·
    edit-2
    2 hours ago

    One of the more interesting polls out of this was whether voters were casting in support of or against a candidate.

    86% of Mamdani voters were voting out of support of their candidate.

    Half of Cuomo voters were voting against another candidate. (Mamdani.)

    Voting against a candidate is a losing strategy.

  • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    33
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    3 hours ago

    Now that the Dems won EVERYTHING, by WIDE margins, it is clear that the Dems have the upper hand. Here’s what they should do now with the power they just took back:

    • Double down on the shutdown, and demand even more concessions. Nothing less than full compliance will be sufficient. Otherwise, we’ll see where we are a year from now.

    • Adopt a true progressive agenda. What happened to these MAGA Traitors is going to happen to MAGA-appeasing Democrats, too.

    • Primary every weak Democrat - Schmuck Schumer, Jeffries, etc. They are almost as much the enemy as MAGA. If they lose, we get stronger, and if they win, they’ll know they dodged a bullet, and they better get with the new PROGRESSIVE program.

    • Force their hand on everything. Make them reject even reasonable Democratic and Progressive demands. Don’t let them off the hook for anything, then use it against them viciously in the Midterms.

  • nao@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    11
    ·
    3 hours ago

    Looking forward to see if all the people that announced they would leave NYC if he won are going to keep their promise.

  • SaraTonin@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    43
    ·
    6 hours ago

    Okay. Commentators have been saying for a while that a victory for him could be a signal of the American left learning that actually progressive policies and candidates can be successful and on the Democrats as a whole actually moving to the left. Let’s hope that that’s actually true, rather than it being dismissed as “New York’s different”.

    Hopefully, the recent buzz around AOC will help, too. I’ve been seeing more of Crockett in the news, as well.

    We’ll see. This is definitely a very positive move, though.

    • tyranical_typhon@lemmings.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      30
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      5 hours ago

      I’d love to see AOC win the nomination in 2028, but we’re already seeing swaths of morons trying to get us to ‘fall in line’ for an establishment candidate.

      I genuinely have no idea why people are still so stupid after all that’s transpired, but it’s really lowered my expectations of them going forward.

    • boonhet@sopuli.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      19
      ·
      6 hours ago

      I do hope they’ll realize that concrete policy proposals are such a huge part of what won here, not just Mamdani’s ideology or personality. The interview where he was asked about the bus plan being feasible was amazing, he had examples and numbers to back it up. It wasn’t just an “it would be cool” idea.

  • nothrone@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    70
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    7 hours ago

    This is great news. However, I am still dumbfounded on how 42% voted for the other guy. He is literally a sexual assaulter and he was endorsed by Trump and Elon Musk! How is it that so many people still voted for him?

    Mamdani could not have had a better campaign, yet, he had just ~8% more votes. If the other guy ran a just tiny bit better campain, things could have been very different.

    I am trully happy that Mamdani won, but yet, I am left scared at the state of things. He should have had 70/80% of votes. After all that has been happening in the US for the last 9 months or so, there is only a 8% number of votes separating the two sides? Holly molly, that is scary.

    • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      19
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      3 hours ago

      First of all, it was a 3 way race, against far better known candidates. He was running an untested Socialist campaign, against ferocious propaganda from BOTH sides. The voters had to remain courageous, ignore ALL that, and tell the “experts” that they didn’t care, something that they historically don’t tend to do. By all standard political theory, he should have been crushed by 50 points.

      In America, many races are within a few points. It’s not at all unusual to have a race decided by only a point, or even less. In any race, an 8 point lead is significant. For an unknown Socialist, coming out of nowhere, against the most incredible bi-partisan smear campaign I’ve ever seen, to win by 8 points, is an enormous victory.

      Both MAGA and established Democrats are terrified today. The Progressive Left just fired the first shots of the New Civil War, and hit every target.

      • Serinus@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        53 minutes ago

        I don’t think many established Democrats are terrified. If anything, they’re hopefully learning lessons. Get your damn fingers out of the wind trying to test which narrative will appeal to the most people, and instead do what makes sense and show an actual vision for what your district/city/state/country can look like.

    • Jhex@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      4 hours ago

      However, I am still dumbfounded on how 42% voted for the other guy. He is literally a sexual assaulter and he was endorsed by Trump and Elon Musk! How is it that so many people still voted for him?

      because too many Americans still think “wE aRE NoT thEre YEt!”

    • dreamkeeper@literature.cafe
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      12
      ·
      edit-2
      5 hours ago

      As much of a POS as Cuomo is, he’s been elected before and a lot of older people trust him because of that, for reasons I can’t fathom. He was simultaneously a terrible candidate who also had a high floor.

      Though I 100% agree that it’s disgusting how many Americans don’t seem to care about the character of their leadership, because it absolutely matters. You don’t get to whine about corrupt, uncaring politicians when you consistently reward them with your vote.

    • SabinStargem@lemmy.today
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      18
      ·
      6 hours ago

      The enemies of progress own most of the major US news outlets. I think that is the biggest reason why so many people voted for a dipshit like Cuomo.

      A second possibility is name recognition. Now that Zohran gets to run New York for awhile, his name and ideas will spread. That means during the next round of elections, he becomes the defending champ with all the advantages that brings to the table. If he is a good leader, he probably will have a much greater margin of votes than Cuomo ever did.

    • mrdown@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      3 hours ago

      There is a lot of much racists, xenophobic, socialistophobe and communistophobe in the new york and the usa

    • Cassanderer@thelemmy.club
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      7 hours ago

      Look at biden’s election, a few hundred thousand people, three of those 5 states by 30k.

      One would think they would have tried to be popular after that.

      People do not realize what is at stake and how both sides will fail them generally, or how tjey will not fail them as with mamdani.

    • insaneinthemembrane@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      2 hours ago

      This is local but the fascist takeover of America is not local, given the rise of the far right together and American bad actors funding and working abroad. So this news of someone on the left with a major win becomes relevant in the worldwide context.

    • mjr@infosec.pub
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      16
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      5 hours ago

      NYC has lots of foreign residents and visitors, maybe the most of any USA city, so isn’t a foreign-born mayor there more than merely ‘internal news’? It’s not like the mayoral election of Nowhere, North Dakota.

    • _stranger_@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      4 hours ago

      All world news happens somewhere local. They should rename this com to “Not US News” if that’s how they want to define it and let people who live in the world post news that happens in the world to world news

      • Bruncvik@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        3 hours ago

        This rule is legacy from Reddit, where r/news got dominated by US-centric news. r/worldnews was created to allow non-US news to be seen.

        That said, I agree that this is a world news event. If nothing else, this may distract the Trump administration from international bullying for a while. Perhaps even redirect the Venezuelan invasion force to the NYC harbour…

        • _stranger_@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          3 hours ago

          legacy rules from reddit seem like exactly the kind of thing that should be scrutinized before being implemented.

      • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        2 hours ago

        It’s based on users sending in reports, and positive news for the left or news critical of Israel unleashes an army of rules lawyers.

    • rmrf@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      3 hours ago

      New York has more economic influence on the world than most individual countries. This, economically speaking, is more significant than an eventful election for Australian PM.

  • canofcam@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    31
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    8 hours ago

    The real concern is that with 8 million potential voters, NYC barely breaks 2 million.

    This is why it’s always such a toss-up between fascism and normalcy - because too many people are complacent.

    • mjr@infosec.pub
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      22
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      7 hours ago

      8.8 million population, which probably means a bit less than 7 million potential voters because kids and others can’t vote and it’s a relatively young city. Only 5 million registered to vote at present.

      So still 2 million is worryingly low, but not as bad as if there were 8m potential voters.

  • ordnance_qf_17_pounder@reddthat.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    40
    ·
    9 hours ago

    Beautiful news. Fuck off Cuomo, fuck off Trump. This is a win for the common New Yorker. I hope the high profile nature of this mayoral election has reverberations far beyond NYC.

  • Tempus Fugit@midwest.social
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    69
    ·
    10 hours ago

    This is fantastic and I wish him the best. He’s going to need the best communications team any politician has had thus far. All the odds and big money interests are stacked against him. He’s going to be attacked from every conceivable angle, from every level of government. If he remains true and righteous, he’ll persevere.

    • Entertainmeonly@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      4 hours ago

      If the dems are even half there at this point they will rally ny as a bastion and make that city shine. Show what proper government attention looks like. Unfortunately they will probably do absolutely nothing to help and many small things that manage to only hinder. Let’s hope he shines though it all.

    • dreamkeeper@literature.cafe
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      5 hours ago

      That already happened during the election. Can’t say I’m worried about his PR team’s ability to handle the onslaught.

      I fully expect the media to start manufacturing bullshit issues the second he’s sworn in though.

  • peoplebeproblems@midwest.social
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    15
    ·
    8 hours ago

    What I think is truly wild: 800,000+ voters still voted against someone whose policies would have helped make their lives better.

  • arrow74@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    57
    ·
    10 hours ago

    I’m enjoying the unhinged rants I’m seeing from conservative social media. They’re not happy and it’s a fantastic read

    • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      22
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      9 hours ago

      both the DNC(old guard, DInos) and the gop donors were going in with the propaganda against madamni for months

      • arrow74@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        11
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        7 hours ago

        Yes, but they aren’t the ones making incoherent social media rants rn.

        Hell even my local republican congressman got on the unhinged rant train. Only words he missed on the bingo card were 9/11 and communism

        • Two9A@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          7 hours ago

          Really enjoyed the Daily Show’s quip about ushering in “a communist 9/11”, where every building takes a little damage.

        • ripcord@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          7 hours ago

          What social media are you on where you see a bunch of right-wing diatribes…?

          • arrow74@lemmy.zip
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            8
            ·
            7 hours ago

            Basically any of my local news networks accounts and community pages/accounts.

            Welcome to the south!

            Even some leftists accounts I follow that are celebrating are getting brigaded by upset conservatives. Honestly it’s been good entertainment

  • Bonifratz@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    13
    ·
    8 hours ago

    Maybe the best-run election campaign I have ever followed. When I first heard about him, I was sure that he would make some blunders here and there, or somebody would dig up some legitimate dirt that could stick.

    But instead his messaging was on point, at all times. The only dirt people found were like one statement about the police and one about the intifada, none of which mattered much. He held his own in the debates. His ads were interesting and incredibly well made. The music choices were great. Hell, even just the Bollywood style ZOHRAN campaign logo was worth a 100k votes!

    I really can’t think of a single thing about the campaign that could’ve been done better.

    • Cassanderer@thelemmy.club
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      7 hours ago

      Cuomo’s ai fearmomgering criminals ad was a joke. Cuomo like all moderates are still playing politics in 1990.