Has Zohran Mamdani shown the Democrats how to win again?

Zohran Mamdani’s stunning victory in the New York City mayoral election may be awkward for senior Democrats who failed fully to endorse him – including New York’s two senators.

The 34-year-old socialist was elected mayor of America’s most populous city with the highest voter turnout in more than 50 years. But House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who represents a Brooklyn district, only endorsed him late last month. Chuck Schumer, the party’s leader in the Senate and another New Yorker, refused to say if he’d voted for Mamdani or not.

Mamdani says his victory has shown how to defeat Donald Trump in the next election: with a left-wing populist, anti-establishment ticket. But the Democratic Party also won decisive victories in two other gubernatorial races – with moderate, centrist candidates. Abigail Spanberger easily overturned a Republican majority in Virginia, while Mikie Sherrill defied expectations of a tight race with 13-point win in New Jersey. Now, the party is divided over which lesson to learn.

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What did the commentators say?

Moderate Democrats and their media allies will now try to claim Mamdani’s “improbable victory” doesn’t matter, said Alex Shephard, senior editor of The New Republic. They will say a young, inexperienced Muslim democratic socialist can become mayor of New York City but New York City is “not like the rest of the country”. They will say his campaign – although built on “a series of tactile, eminently achievable and, frankly, small-scale promises” – is “all a fantasy”. “Make no mistake: they are afraid of Mamdani.” And they should be: “Mamdani is not a warning shot; he is a sign of things to come.” Democratic voters want “radical, transformative change”.

Democrats showed that their “demoralised party” can still win – “and win big”, said Lisa Lerer, political correspondent at The New York Times. Yet the party “still hasn’t coalesced around a coherent political identity or a clear electoral playbook that can win in swing states and safe states alike”. Mamdani, Sherrill and Spanberger all “benefited from showing independent streaks and a willingness to break with party leaders”.

There was a “common theme” that emerged from this trio of wins, said Ry Rivard and Madison Fernandez on Politico: affordability. For all their “ideological differences”, Mamdani, Sherrill and Spanberger found “a shared language that aims at the heart” of Trump’s populism: “the high cost of everyday life”. In a political landscape “dominated by culture-war battles and Trump’s omnipresence, Democrats found traction by talking about rent, utilities and groceries, instead of ideology”.

“It will be hard to resist” seeing the New York result “as a stunning endorsement of Mamdani’s particular flavour of progressivism”, said Poppy Coburn in The Telegraph. But, actually, his popular Leftism “doesn’t care about winning over the centre, and certainly doesn’t care about the deficit”. Trump has “little reason to fear Mamdani and his ilk”. And each victory like this will only make it harder for the Democrat establishment to resist demands from “its hyper-polarised base to shift left”.

“Sure, a guy like Mamdani can win in New York. But a woman like Kamala Harris can win in California. There’s still everything to play for in 2028.”

What next?

Senator Bernie Sanders heralded Mamdani as “the future of the Democratic Party”. When asked on CNN if he agreed, Hakeem Jeffries said, “No.” It’s clear “the Democrats remain a party teeming with tensions over age, ideology, tactics and tone, and they are still rebuilding their damaged brand,” said Lerer in the NYT. These results suggest “an intra-party battle may be looming” as they get ready for the midterms next year, and “a wide-open presidential primary contest” in 2027.

Are they more competitive as “a centrist party in the mould of Sherrill and Spanberger”? Or are they better positioned with “a populist vision”, like that of Mamdani? Democratic leaders “want to have it both ways”. They think the lesson is “combining winning issues like the high cost of living with a be-everywhere, be-authentic style of campaigning and communicating”.

“There’s mounting evidence that voters want to fire Donald Trump and the people loyal to him, but we still have more to do convince people to hire us,” said veteran Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson. “Voters right now feel like their government is betraying them and it’s costing them. We have to be not just the response to that but the antidote.”