NYC Mayor: 6 Thoughts As Zohran Surges

On The State Of The Race, And What It Means

I’m quite fascinated by this New York City Mayoral primary at the end of this month, partially out of nostalgia and partially out of interest. NYC Democratic primaries will probably always have a special place in my heart - my 2021 betting preview for TheLines (RIP) was my first piece there, and I hit a winner after a needlessly stressful RCV count that nearly saw Eric Adams blow it. (If you want a time capsule of when I filed that piece, Andrew Yang was still the co-favourite on PredictIt. What a time.)

I don’t have a lot of strong takes about the race, but I’m doing Px3 later this week (subscribe, listen to the pod, help my guy Justin out) to talk about the race, so let’s work through some of the various things I’ve got swirling in my brain. An old school #ScrimshawSix on the polls, the state of the race, what it means for the US context if Zohran wins and why everybody should be cautious about overreading this result either way.

Even If He Loses, Zohran’s A Winner

Going from a state legislator with somewhat of a profile to every leftist’s new example that will be quoted indefinitely is a win. Whether he wins or loses, Zohran Mamdani has fundamentally changed the nature of his career trajectory and of the left in both America and internationally. He’s run a phenomenal campaign, leaning into authenticity and a form of progressive populism that doesn’t merely constitute throwing social liberalism overboard. What any of that means for how Democrats will do in swing seat and swing district general elections is non-existent, but as a guide to a new, post-COVID left politics that’s valuable.

It’s a campaign that will be talked about and dissected for years, and it will be repeated by many worse imitations of him for years to come. Every time one of those imitations flop, our appreciation for the campaign he’s running, centering authenticity and populist economics while showing a level of tactical smarts about how to win in RCV is going to rise and rise.

Will he win? My guess is yes, but I wouldn’t hazard that guess with much confidence. But the reason so many of his imitations will fail where he succeeded - whether he actually gets 50.01% or 45% on the final ballot - is because a lot of this isn’t about Zohran.

Cuomo Is Running A Distinctly Un-Cuomo Campaign

Andrew Cuomo was one of the most prominently challenged Democrats from the left while he was Governor, facing at least somewhat credible primary threats in both 2014 and 2018. The way he dealt with them, with both languishing below 35%, was to be proactive in how he fought Zephyr Teachout and Cynthia Nixon. He took those threats seriously. activated his political machine, and by the end made people who believed he could lose look like morons. Cuomo never let those races get close, killed any momentum progressives could get, and never got complacent about his position. This time? He’s thought he’s had it in the bag and is running one of the worst campaigns in decades.

Now, he’s still winning - by 8% in a mid-May Emerson, by 12% in his internal this week, and by 2% in a Data For Progress poll for Zohran-aligned forces - but there are very bad trend lines and field dates that have no or limited samples after the debate and the AOC endorsement. There were scattered reports Cuomo was going on the air for Mets games this weekend, which is a sign they’re potentially scared. There’s still time to stitch this back together, but it’s not really wrong to feel it’s slipping away from Cuomo.

The best recent comparison is probably a race four years ago - Nina Turner’s bid for the OH-11 Democratic nomination was a similar race, where a high profile candidate raced out to a seemingly insurmountable lead before the campaign really got underway. Turner’s campaign stagnated, and a race early polls had her winning by as much as 35% ended up as a 5.5% loss. The downside case for Cuomo is that having been frankly impotent during this campaign, it’ll be hard to get it back up.

The other problem here is there’s some survivorship bias here (or, potentially, lack thereof) when it comes to the campaigns in this spot that wobbled and couldn’t get it back. I can remember Nina Turner and Joe Crowley and even Poilievre, in Carleton, but I can’t remember the others we got excited for that never got there. It’s also the case I am staunchly anti-Cuomo, and therefore it’s entirely possible I’m being rosy-eyed about Zohran’s chances accordingly.

The CopyCats Will Be Swift And Immediate (And Fail Miserably)

If we can harken our eyes back to 2019 and 2021, there was another non-white, very good on TikTok and digital, progressive in North America that had people excited. His name was Jagmeet Singh. At Singh’s most successful election, 2021, he won 4 less seats in English Canada than his predecessor won in the completely unacceptable result of 2015, and in his worst one he led the NDP to 7 seats and the loss of official party status. Politics doesn’t always work like people think, according to the formula.

There is often a very facile and honestly boring conversation about politicians that often mirrors the way we talk about musicians. We reduce them to a few salient facts, like I just did with Jagmeet and Zohran. People often talk about musicians and bands as if the archetype of the music is enough to make it good. Spotify’s entire business model is based on “Well, if you love Al Green, here's a bunch of other 70s Black soul artists” and hoping you love those too. And sometimes I do, and sometimes I don’t, because I don’t just love Al Green because it’s Black soul, I love Al Green cause he’s Al Fucking Green.

Whatever intangible “it” exists in politics, Zohran has it. Plenty of the people who try and “do a Zohran” moving forward won’t. Some of them will have the intangible quality but be running against a good candidate, not whatever shell of himself Andrew fucking Cuomo is. But those putting these expectations on the next wave of progressive challengers, both foreign and domestic, should be cleareyed about this.

What Does It Say About The Democratic Party?

Little, and I might be one of 12 people on earth who think there’s nothing wrong with that.

This race has shown once again that politics is incredibly dynamic, and incredibly backloaded. It’s arguable that the first 6 months of a race matter less than the final 6 weeks. In that context, Democrats not having solved their (many legitimate) problems in a post-2024 world is not a problem yet, especially in the context of a 2026 that feels more locked in than any midterm in recent years.

Democrats should win the House, Roy Cooper (if he runs) should beat Thom Tillis, and the GOP really, really, should 51 or 52 seats in the Senate. I’m not expressing an even remotely firm Maine prediction because who the fuck knows, but it feels pretty unlikely that Maine is going to tip on views of National Democrats. (It will tip on to what extent Maine voters treat Susan Collins like Susan Collins or as a Generic Republican.) Even the Governor’s map is mostly Democrats defending terrain they should hold, unless you want to claim National Democrats’ identity crisis will be why Kansas flips back red without Laura Kelly on the ballot.

Unlike in 2018, where the party needed unity and discipline to flip the 23 seats they needed to win the House and faced a bloodbath Senate map, this time around the party will likely achieve the same outcomes if they’re united or divided. A robust 2028 primary is happening either way, and it starting now isn’t exactly a crisis for the party.

There will be plenty of Grand Unified Theories about What It All Means, in the same way that we saw plenty of those stories in the aftermath of 2024 as progressives suffered losses. It’s the nature of the beast, but one primary in one city does not a national answer to a national problem make.

How Many Horrible NDP/UK Labour Takes Will Spring From This?

I’d insert the Mean Girls GIF here if I was smart enough to figure out if I even can, but it is about to be open season on people desperately trying to claim this as proof that Zohran represents a durable path to success for the left in a post-Trump 2.0 world. In a lot of ways, if you’re a British or Canadian lefty, there’s a case that Zohran crashing and burning in the last weeks is in your best interest, if it stops an endless barrage of idiotic and counterproductive advice in the context of your politics hurting the actual cause of rebuilding and progress your real problems. Zohran’s great! But importing another American strategy won’t work.

Who’s Gonna Win?

If you take the flat average of the Cuomo and Zohran polls it’s a 7 point Cuomo lead essentially pre-debate/AOC endorsement. If you think AOC’s endorsement matters, then it’s probably within 5% right now, meaning that Cuomo has to hold on to that lead for another 2 weeks. I’m doubtful.

My guess is Cuomo scrapes out a smaller than expected lead on the first round and it’s clear to everyone that Zohran will win on preferences, even if it’s unclear by how much. More polling, especially post-endorsement polling, will be valuable, but I’d rather be Zohran.