🔗 Share this article

Just two days prior to the New York mayoral election, Michael Lange issued a bold forecast – not just who would win overall, and block by block. Lange, an expert in elections who grew up in New York City, has spent more than ten years in progressive politics and has become a kind of local celebrity recently for his deep dives into municipal statistics and voter surveys.

He released his extremely precise prediction map – which correctly forecast that Zohran Mamdani would win although failed to predict Andrew Cuomo’s strong performance – on his newsletter, the Narrative War. He possesses a talent for witty coinages. He pointed out, for instance, the divide between the “commie corridor”, running from one neighborhood to Bushwick to Astoria, where he predicted (correctly) that Mamdani would win by huge margins, and the conservative-leaning zone on affluent parts of Manhattan. In those areas, “the Free Press and financial newspapers outrank the New York Times” in readership and most voters leaned toward the independent, campaigning as a conservative-courting independent.

Voting Day Patterns and Unexpected Results

What was your election night?

I had to do that since they were adding approximately 200K ballots into the tally every few minutes! I felt somewhat anxious at the beginning: Mamdani led the early vote by a dozen percentage points, but there were large groups of ballots that came in later and his lead went from 12% to 8%. I was worried.

Understand, there was a world in which election day turned out somewhat badly for him, in which Cuomo would have essentially increasing his support from the earlier contest. But Mamdani gained 500,000 votes to his initial base, and this was critical why he succeeded. He campaigned and greatly broadened his support from the first round.

Expanding Support

Where did Mamdani get additional support from?

He built the coalition that the left long aimed for: diverse racially, youthful, tenants and individuals facing cost pressures. He improved considerably with minority communities, working- and middle-class voters, relative to the earlier election. Plus he further maximized his core of left-leaning activists, young leftists, and Muslims and south Asians. Victory required without making those significant inroads.

He built the coalition that progressives long aimed for: multiracial, young, renters and people squeezed by affordability

There were also a number of supporters of both candidates – is this significant?

It’s definitely a real thing, confined to Hispanic laborers, south Asians and Islamic voters. Electors in immigrant strongholds that supported Trump previously went for Zohran this year. But I wouldn’t say he was gaining white working-class voters and Trump loyalists.

Voter Participation and Impact

A major development of the night was the sky-high participation. Who benefited?

Each candidate. Turnout was much greater than I had expected. I figured it could go over 2 million, but it reached 2.3M – that is a lot of darn voters. Existed a decent opposition group, who were motivated, but the Mamdani base was equally driven, and that sufficed to secure victory.

You predicted he’d exceed half the ballots. Is he on course for that?

Right now it appears he’s likely to surpass half. He’s at 50.4% but there’s still around 200K ballots uncounted as of Wednesday morning. So it’s not it’s definitive, but I think probable, and I wish he achieves it so afterwards no one can say Sliwa was a spoiler.

GOP Decline

Curtis Sliwa, the conservative contender, was another surprise. His support completely collapsed.

He didn’t win a single precinct in any borough. Including one neighborhood in the borough, similar to an highly conservative area. That really surprised me. The independent kept very white areas, very wealthy areas and devout communities, and plus gained many conservatives on the island with a high participation. I believe there was significant tactical voting by the Republicans. They were doing it before the former president tweeted his support for the candidate, but it assisted. It might have changed the outcome unless Mamdani’s coalition hadn’t grown.

The “Commie Corridor”

Regarding your often-discussed “commie corridor” – was support for Mamdani overwhelming in those areas of Brooklyn and Queens?

I think existed some weakening of the commie corridor in some areas like neighborhoods that have more older white ethnic folks. There, for example, the property owners and residents supported Cuomo. Thus there existed some opposition. However no, mostly the commie corridor is a key factor why Zohran prevailed – he scored between high percentages in Fort Greene, Clinton Hill and Bushwick.

Jewish Voters

In the lead-up to the vote there was coverage on if the candidate was making inroads with Jewish New Yorkers. Any indication that he succeeded?

There are neighborhoods with many non-religious and left-inclined voters – like specific locales – where he performed strongly. But in the wealthy Jewish communities like the Manhattan area, his Middle East stance definitely mattered in those places. Similarly in the more middle-class Jewish areas like Queens neighborhoods, or Spuyten Duyvil and Riverdale – they favored Cuomo. Plus, there are Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe in southern Brooklyn, who were pretty staunchly Cuomo. Therefore it’s unclear if existed crazy narrative-busters on this one, but Mamdani retained left-leaning areas and including sections of the Upper West Side by big margins.

Long-Term Significance

Has Mamdani rewritten what New York means politically? Will the commie corridor become a launch pad for leftwing candidates?

Yes, it’s not accidental that some of the biggest figures from progressives come from a handful of neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. I’m sure that there will be more of that – people will come from these neighborhoods to be elevated nationally.

But I think that every city in the US could develop similar progressive hubs. Urban places are the centers of leftwing power in the nation – because youth reside there, people rent and they represent locales where people are crushed by the inequalities we face.