Good morning. It’s Wednesday. Today we’ll look at closer look at a poll that put Zohran Mamdani well ahead of his opponents in the race for mayor. We’ll also get details on an audit by the city comptroller that found that city schools are failing to help students learn English.
It’s too soon to say that Zohran Mamdani will be the next mayor of New York City. Election Day is still 57 days away. But one takeaway from a survey by The New York Times and Siena University is that Mamdani’s principal opponent, Andrew Cuomo, faces steep odds.
The survey found that among likely voters, Cuomo trailed Mamdani by more than 20 points in a four-way race, 46 percent to 24 percent, with the Republican candidate, Curtis Sliwa, and Mayor Eric Adams farther behind. If Sliwa and Adams dropped out of the race, Cuomo would close the gap to less than five points, according to the survey, and even then, Mamdani is still ahead, 48 percent to 44 percent.
The political universe has shifted toward Mamdani since he stunned the Democratic establishment by beating Cuomo in the primary in June by 12 percentage points. The former governor, who at 67 is more than twice the age of Mamdani, had been trying for a comeback. But he has continued with his campaign, running as an independent with backing from moneyed real estate developers and businesspeople.
Mamdani’s share of voters between the ages of 18 and 29 was seven times that of Cuomo, and more than four times his share of voters between 30 and 44. Only among voters 65 and older did Mamdani and Cuomo draw equal shares.
The survey, as a snapshot of the race, captured the unusual turbulence that has defined the last few weeks. The day after polling began, The Times reported that President Trump and powerful figures in New York City were maneuvering to narrow the field to set up a one-on-one contest between Mamdani and Cuomo. Adams has told allies that he was considering suspending his campaign for the right opportunity, but has said publicly that he would stay in the race. Sliwa has also insisted that he would not quit.
Cuomo has called Mamdani “an existential threat to New York City,” but the poll suggested that Cuomo’s attacks have not caught on. Mamdani was the only candidate who was viewed positively by a majority of voters in the survey, with 52 percent saying they have a “very favorable” or “somewhat favorable” impression of him. Only 36 percent used those terms about Cuomo.
Perhaps more tellingly, 63 percent said the word “inspirational” applied to Mamdani, compared with 43 percent for Cuomo. And 56 percent said Mamdani “cares about people like me,” eight points more than said it about Cuomo.
What was striking was that roughly half of Mamdani’s supporters said they did not expect him to accomplish everything he has promised. And regarding one of his key policies, making buses in the city free, some 57 percent said that officials should not follow through on the proposal even though 60 percent said they supported or strongly supported the idea.
Who would be the more effective mayor? The difference between Mamdani and Cuomo was four percentage points, with Cuomo leading, 57 percent to 53 percent. Mamdani held a five point edge over Cuomo when voters were asked who “would do the best job” in dealing with the Trump administration. When they were asked who would do best on crime, Mamdani came in one point ahead of Cuomo, at 30 percent to 29, with Sliwa at 23 percent and Adams at 15.
Voters said they trusted Mamdani over Cuomo, 49 percent to 23 percent, on handling the city’s affordability challenges, with the other candidates trailing him. Mamdani’s proposal to freeze increases on rent-stabilized apartments received particularly strong support: Nearly 70 percent of voters, including majorities of Cuomo and Adams supporters, favored the policy. Increasing taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers, as Mamdani has proposed, is also widely popular, the poll found.
Still. Cuomo’s proposal to limit who can lease rent-stabilized apartments drew support. Cuomo, who has referred to Mamdani as “a fraud, a wealthy child of privilege masquerading as working class,” called for income limits on rent-stabilized tenants as a way to draw attention to where Mamdani lives — in a rent-stabilized apartment, despite his six-figure salary as a state assemblyman.
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The latest New York news
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A new direction for the Cuomo campaign: To boost his standing in the race for mayor, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo is expanding his team and focusing on more interactive politics and media appearances. He argues that the race will be a head-to-head contest between him and the Democratic nominee, Zohran Mamdani.
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Not sitting on the sidelines: Some of the city’s richest landlords and businesspeople met with former Gov. Andrew Cuomo to help plot his path to City Hall, saying “the time to act is now.”
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On the ballot: The New York City Board of Elections voted to put three housing-related measures on the November ballot. The City Council had argued that the measures should not go before voters because ballot language would not explain that a “yes” vote would reduce the Council’s power.
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Life after a tackle: Damar Hamlin became nationally recognized after suffering cardiac arrest during a 2023 football game. After months of therapy, he has returned to the field and embraced a new role as an advocate for CPR training and automated external defibrillators, or A.E.D.s. One such device helped save his life.
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City schools don’t help students learn English, an audit finds
The enrollment of students learning English as a new language has soared in recent years. But a report from the city comptroller, Brad Lander, found “systemic breakdowns” in their education.
The report said that the city’s school system had denied legally mandated instruction and services to thousands of children. Lander’s office reviewed records of more than 300 students learning English as a new language. The city’s Education Department had failed to provide almost half those children with the required courses or the minimum amount of instructional time, “crippling students’ language development and academic progress,” according to the report.
About 40 percent of the students were taught by teachers who were not fully qualified to teach them, a finding that the comptroller’s audit described as “shocking.”
The parents of nearly one in three students were not informed by the city of their rights, “eroding trust and access for all families,” the report said.
My colleague Troy Closson writes that the findings come as English language learners make up a greater share of enrollment: Nearly 175,000 public school students were identified as English language learners last school year, more than 16 percent of all public school students, according to city data. About two in three speak Spanish at home.
Onika Richards, a spokeswoman for the Education Department, said that it “had already implemented strategic, systemwide initiatives to strengthen language instruction, compliance indicators and ensure equity in access to higher quality education” well before the release of the comptroller’s report.
METROPOLITAN diary
Swipe and Scrape
Dear Diary:
I went to a nail salon in the West Village on a balmy spring evening. It had good reviews on TikTok, so I had decided to check it out.
The nail technician used an electric nail file that made a whirring sound to remove my existing manicure. Unfortunately, the gel polish on my middle finger’s nail had started to peel, leaving it half stuck and half separated. The electric file wouldn’t work.
When I pointed this out, the technician reached into a side drawer. I saw an unmistakable flash of yellow, black and blue as she pulled out a MetroCard.
She slid the card between my nail and the peeling gel manicure. She gently pressed the card forward, trying to further separate the polish from my nail.
Our eyes met, and I couldn’t help but smile.
After employing this technique for a minute, she took out a pair of nail clippers and cut the lifted polish off with a swift snip.
I walked out with a cute pink manicure.
— Jennifer Suzukawa-Tseng
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Francis Mateo and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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James Barron writes the New York Today newsletter, a morning roundup of what’s happening in the city.
The post Times-Siena Poll Shows Where Mamdani’s Strong Support Lies appeared first on New York Times.
