And ultimately – Zohran Mamdani stuns New York

In an election night showing more decisive than even his most optimistic supporters dared to dream of, Zohran Mamdani toppled a political Goliath Tuesday. As of 10 p.m., the 33-year-old insurgent candidate held a strong 7-point lead in first-choice voters over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary for mayor. 

“My friends, we have done it,” Mamdani said just a little after midnight, addressing supporters at a packed campaign party in Long Island City, Queens. “I will be your Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City.” As the crowd cried and cheered and chanted his name, he spoke of making history, uniting New Yorkers after what’s been a contentious race, and promised to “remake this great city, not in my image, but in the image of every New Yorker who has only known struggle.”

 Cuomo himself saw the writing on the wall. Shortly before 10:30 p.m., the self-described “fighter” appeared on stage at his watch party to announce that he had called Mamdani to congratulate him on his “deserved” victory. “Tonight was not our night. Tonight was Assemblyman Mamdani’s night,” Cuomo said. “He put together a great campaign, and he touched young people and inspired them and moved them and got them to come out and vote.” Cuomo said he would “look at the numbers” and have conversations about how to move forward – a reference to deciding whether to run as an independent in November – but stopped short of committing to that. At the end of the night, Mamdani led Cuomo 43.5% to 36.4%.

We won’t know the full breakdown of ranked-choice voting for another week, but the consensus among political watchers as results came in was that if Mamdani was ahead in first-choice votes on election night, the chances of Cuomo overtaking him with ranked choice tabulation were next to none. 

Mamdani’s feat is unprecedented. Over the course of eight months, he went from an unknown candidate polling at about 1% to mounting a truly competitive challenge against one of New York’s most well-known, if scandal-scarred politicians – one backed by the biggest super PAC ever assembled.

Someone just yelled Cuomo is defeated and everyone is cheering. pic.twitter.com/vefQ36POp9

— Sahalie Donaldson (@SahalieD) June 25, 2025

Mamdani’s youth, his leftist policies, lack of managerial experience, proud affiliation with the Democratic Socialists of America, and willingness to break with mainstream Democratic orthodoxy to criticize the Israeli government didn’t stop his rise to mayoral front-runner. Leading up to election day, there was a groundswell of support in his favor, drawn to his economic populist message, charisma, positivity and creative social media strategy. And his support was ultimately not limited to young gentrifier types in brownstone Brooklyn and lower Manhattan. On election night, he appeared to have a lead in areas of eastern Queens and central and southern Brooklyn as well as northern Manhattan – all regions previously unwelcoming to leftist candidates. It was this "unprecedented coalition” Mamdani spoke of Tuesday night. “Dreaming requires solidarity,” he said, promising that while New Yorkers won’t always agree with him, he would never hide from them. 

The results are even more stunning when you zoom out a bit to four years ago. When Democratic Mayor Eric Adams won the primary in 2021, were any of this year’s candidates thinking they’d have a shot at the city’s highest office four years later? Cuomo was months away from resigning in disgrace and ruining his chance at a four-term governorship. Mamdani was only six months into his first term in office. Scott Stringer was on his way to a fifth place mayoral finish, and Adrienne Adams was mounting what seemed like a losing campaign for City Council speaker. Perhaps only mainstay Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa could accurately predict he’d be on the ballot. The pace, fervor and sheer quantity of candidates in this Democratic primary makes it easy to forget that Gracie Mansion is not vacant, but in fact has an incumbent running for reelection. Eric Adams – who previously enjoyed support from the city’s establishment Democrats, real estate players and some influential labor unions – couldn’t have hoped for a better foil as he gears up for an independent run in November. 

Cuomo’s return to politics – while it proved unsuccessful – showcased that the ex-governor still knows how to twist arms and wrangle support. He managed to lock down endorsements from powerful unions and much of the Democratic establishment. That includes 40% of his top supporters who once called for his removal from office – county party leaders and members of Congress among them. Pro-Cuomo forces easily outspent Mamdani, thanks to a $25 million super PAC that has spent more than $7 million of its funds on ads and mailers attacking Mamdani. 

But Cuomo’s early dominance in the race also inspired an alignment – if somewhat begrudging and dawdling – of the leading candidates to the left of the former governor. “What we proved tonight is that organized people can beat organized money,” said Working Families Party Co-Director Jasmine Gripper at Mamdani’s celebration party. Mamdani and Lander took that collaboration to its most explicit end in the final weeks of the race, cross-endorsing each other and campaigning together on Stephen Colbert’s “Late Night” on the eve of Election Day. Adrienne Adams and Zellnor Myrie, who were also endorsed on the New York Working Families Party’s slate, didn’t take it that far but got behind the left’s “Don’t Rank Cuomo” message. (We won’t know how successful any ranked choice voting strategy among those candidates was until next week, when ranked choice voting tabulations are expected to be released.)

That Mamdani, a millennial with scant time in office, emerged as the leading candidate of those four took more than just Cuomo by surprise. Lander forfeited an easy reelection to his comptroller seat in order to run, while Speaker Adams failed to break out as a late entrant in the race. 

More than 385,000 voters flocked to the polls to vote early. That’s more than double the number of New Yorkers who cast their ballots early in the 2021 mayoral primary. While the COVID-19 pandemic no doubt had an adverse impact on early voting four years ago, there’s still a measure of unprecedentedness in the data. For one, nearly 25% of early voters did not vote in a Democratic primary between 2012 and 2024 – a significant shift from the 2021 mayoral primary in which only 3% of voters had never participated in a Democratic primary, Gothamist reported. For a candidate like Mamdani whose path to victory hinged on activating a new coalition of Democratic primary voters, the increase may have been instrumental. As is the fact that youth voters between the ages of 25 and 34 made up the biggest share of early voting turnout, according to the Board of Elections. 

Lander, the city’s affable and detail-oriented comptroller, had a particularly strong finish to his campaign after months of struggling to distinguish himself in the polls. While attempting to escort a man to safety from a immigration court hearing in lower Manhattan, Lander was roughly apprehended by federal immigration agents and detained for several hours. That coupled with his cross-endorsement with Mamdani and a smattering of positive words from the New York Times’ opinion section and influential editorial board no doubt boosted Lander’s candidacy significantly, though not to a degree to overtake the two leading candidates.

Speaker Adams meanwhile struggled to pick up significant momentum in the race after entering the field later than any of the other candidates. While she’s scored a number of noteworthy endorsements – like the ardent backing of Attorney General Letitia James who’d encouraged her to run in the first place and even scored a second-place endorsement from progressive darling Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – she only just qualified for public matching funds ahead of the deadline. 

Much still looms. The primary election is not necessarily the end of the mayoral race this year.   In many ways, it’s a preview for the November general election, which could have five major candidates on the ballot. Adams, buoyed by the dismissal of his federal charges and hellbent on redemption, will be on the ballot as an independent as will the well-funded lawyer Jim Walden. Curtis Sliwa is running again as a Republican. Cuomo has already laid the groundwork to run as an independent, though he was noncommittal on election night. “He's leaving the door open for November,” Cuomo campaign spokesperson Rich Azzopardi said.