Mamdani: ‘So many of our victories’ were in Trump neighborhoods
Zohran Mamdani, the apparent winner of the New York City Democratic mayoral primary, is touting his campaign’s gains with voters who supported President Trump.
“What we found is that if you have a relentless focus on an economic agenda and you welcome people back, and you turn the political instinct from lecturing to listening, you can still have people come home to the Democratic Party, as long as you show them,” Mamdani said during a Sunday interview on MSNBC's "The Weekend."
“So many of our victories were in neighborhoods that went for Donald Trump in the presidential election," he added. "We’re talking about College Point or Dyker Heights, so many of the same places we were told that we had now lost voters forever.”
An analysis by the Gothamist found that Mamdani, who stunned former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary last week, won 30 percent of districts that Trump won in 2024. Mamdani also performed well in neighborhoods that shifted substantially toward Trump in November, according to the analysis.
In a campaign video filmed the week after Trump won the presidency, Mamdani interviewed voters who backed Trump and asked them about their concerns: groceries, rent, affordability.
His campaign’s focus on these issues paid off. In one Queens district that supported Trump by a 25-point margin and where Mamdani filmed in November, the Gothamist reported, he won with 84 percent of the vote.
His gains with Trump voters have electrified many in a party still reckoning with its 2024 electoral slide nationwide.
“What excites me is that there are moments where someone will cast a ballot for someone with an exclusionary vision, like Donald Trump, and they can still come back to the Democratic Party,” Mamdani said on MSNBC.
The 33-year-old democratic socialist also touted his ability to turn out new voters in a campaign that devoted resources to registering thousands of people to vote. Mamdani also enjoyed strong support from Asian and Hispanic neighborhoods as well as young people, particularly in gentrifying neighborhoods.
“There are so many New Yorkers who previously hadn’t voted in primaries, who saw themselves now in this politics, saw their struggles in our policies, and took that step to actually cast a ballot,” Mamdani said.