Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City on early Wednesday, capping a rapid rise for the 34-year-old democratic socialist who promised to shift power to working-class New Yorkers and confront a hostile Trump administration.
With about 90% of ballots counted, Mamdani led with 50.4% — roughly 1.03 million votes — defeating former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who ran as an independent and received 41.6%, or about 850,000 votes. Republican Curtis Sliwa had 7.1%, about 145,000 votes. Despite withdrawing from the race, outgoing Mayor Eric Adams received roughly 2,000 votes. Mamdani will be sworn in Jan. 1.
His victory secures a milestone as New York’s first Muslim mayor, its first of South Asian heritage and the first born in Africa. He will be the city’s youngest mayor in more than a century.
“New York, tonight you have delivered a mandate for change,” Mamdani told supporters at his Brooklyn victory party, vowing to “wake up each morning with a singular purpose: to make this city better for you than it was the day before.” He also addressed President Donald Trump directly: “New York will remain a city of immigrants — built by immigrants, powered by immigrants and, as of tonight, led by an immigrant. If anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him.”
Mamdani, a member of the state Legislature with little executive experience, began the Democratic primary as an underdog yet routed Cuomo in June, placing him on a clear path to City Hall in a deeply Democratic city. After losing the primary, Cuomo relaunched his bid as an independent. Adams dropped out in September and endorsed Cuomo, tightening the race, but Sliwa stayed in and continued to draw Republican votes. Major U.S. outlets called the race within about 40 minutes of polls closing. Moments later, Mamdani posted a video on X showing subway doors opening as an announcer said, “The next and final stop — City Hall.”
More than 2.1 million New Yorkers cast ballots, the city’s Board of Elections said, the highest turnout in a mayoral race since 1969. Early voting also set a record, with about 730,000 ballots cast in the nine days before Election Day, nearly matching the total vote in 2021.
Mamdani’s win buoyed the Democratic Party’s progressive wing and validated voices urging the party to embrace left-leaning candidates rather than centrists to recapture disaffected voters. He has already drawn scrutiny from national Republicans, including Trump, who cast him as a radical and repeatedly threatened to cut federal funding to the city — and even suggested he might try to arrest and deport Mamdani if he won. Trump posted “…AND SO IT BEGINS!” on his Truth Social site as results rolled in. He also suffered setbacks Tuesday in gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, both won by Democrats in contests viewed as an early referendum on the first months of his second term.
On the trail and in his victory speech, Mamdani leaned into his biography and ideology. “I am young. I am Muslim. I am a democratic socialist. And most damning of all, I refuse to apologize for any of this,” he said to cheers. He added in Arabic, “Ana minkum wa-lakum” — “I am from you and for you” — and thanked his wife, Rama Duwaji, the daughter of Syrian immigrants.
Mamdani campaigned on free child care, free city bus service, city-run grocery stores and creating a Department of Community Safety that would dispatch mental health workers to some emergencies instead of police officers. How he would pay for the proposals remains unclear given state leaders’ opposition to raising taxes on high earners. His approach to the New York Police Department will draw scrutiny. In 2020 he sharply criticized the agency but has since apologized and said he would ask the current commissioner to stay.
Cuomo, Sliwa and other critics assailed Mamdani over his denunciations of Israel’s war conduct in Gaza. A longtime advocate of Palestinian rights, Mamdani has accused Israel of committing genocide and said he would honor an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if the premier visited New York, home to U.N. headquarters — a pledge legal experts say the mayor likely lacks authority to carry out.
The race split New York’s roughly 1.6 million-strong Jewish community. Polls suggested 20% to 40% of Jewish and Israeli voters backed Mamdani despite his anti-Zionist views. Trump urged Jews not to support him, calling any who did “foolish,” while Mamdani rejected accusations of antisemitism, courted Jewish voters and posted a Rosh Hashana greeting in Hebrew. In the campaign’s final days he sought meetings and photo opportunities with heads of major Jewish organizations; people involved said they declined to avoid the appearance of a last-minute endorsement. During his victory speech, Mamdani pledged to “stand firmly with Jewish New Yorkers and not hesitate in the fight against the scourge of antisemitism,” even as critics blamed anti-Israel protests he attended for inflaming tensions. He also said New York “will no longer be a place where you can win votes by inciting against Muslims,” arguing rivals used Islamophobic tactics.
At Cuomo’s midtown event, the former governor conceded and called his campaign “the right fight,” warning that “almost half of New Yorkers did not vote to support a government agenda that makes promises that we know cannot be met.” He offered to help the incoming mayor “in any way.” Sliwa conceded about a half hour after polls closed and wished Mamdani “good luck because if he does well, we do well.” He also warned that if the new administration embraced socialism or weakened the police, he and allies would become the mayor’s “worst enemies.”
Opponents branded Mamdani a “communist,” and the New York Post splashed his image holding a hammer and sickle on its cover under the headline “The Big Red Apple.” Around the same time, the White House’s official social media account posted the New York Knicks logo with the words “Trump is your president.” During the campaign, the team had threatened to sue Mamdani over use of its logo.
Inside the Democratic Party, Mamdani’s ascent unsettled some veterans. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, a New Yorker, withheld an endorsement; Mamdani was arrested at a protest outside Schumer’s home days after the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas massacre. Other Democrats ultimately backed Mamdani while distancing themselves from his positions on Israel.
Mamdani must now assemble an administration and try to turn sweeping promises into policy amid fiscal constraints and an expected clash with the White House. In a message to Trump, he closed his speech with four words: “Turn the volume up.”
First published: 05:06, 11.05.25