Why Zohran Mamdani’s victory will resonate beyond New York City

Vox’s Astead Herndon explains why Zohran Mamdani’s win matters for Democrats.

Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayoral race on Tuesday, defeating disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa to become the first Muslim and first South Asian mayor in the city’s history. To unpack what Mamdani’s win means, I turned to my colleague Astead Herndon, who was on the ground reporting from an election night watch party for Mamdani. (You may have seen his big Mamdani profile in New York Times Magazine last month.)

Astead and I talked about what he’s learned reporting on Mamdani’s campaign, how Mamdani got here, and what his victory means on the national stage, for Vox’s daily newsletter, Today, Explained. Our conversation is below, and you can sign up for the newsletter here for more conversations like this.

Zohran Mamdani just won the NYC mayoral race. Why should people outside New York be invested in this?

I think that this represents an expansion of the progressive playbook that Bernie Sanders wrote for Democrats in his presidential campaigns. Mamdani has successfully modeled how to create a left-liberal coalition among the Democratic electorate, and he’s also modeled how to reach people beyond the ideological spectrum by bringing newer, and particularly younger, voters into the process.

I would say that the reason Donald Trump won the popular vote is because of a dropoff in voter turnout in places like New York and Chicago and a lot of these blue cities. A lot of their brand problem is due to people feeling as if these cities haven’t worked and Democratic governance hasn’t really produced results. And so I would say that this represents a response to that, not just on the electoral front, but also on the policy front. A working city and doing things that tangibly affect people, be it public transit, be it renters, is actually going to produce a better proof point for Democratic politics than they’ve had before.

I think that that all adds up to an election that could feel just as impactful as the initial Bernie playbooks felt.

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Mamdani is a pretty new figure on the political scene. For people who aren’t in New York or haven’t been following this race closely, what should they know about him?

For one, he shows how you can grow that type of name recognition outside of traditional channels. He expertly used digital and social media to make an argument. He expertly used organic field organizing to drive energy.