Upstart challengers in political races often begin with the goal of drawing new or disillusioned voters to their cause. They build excitement, often on social media, but inevitably fall short.
Zohran Mamdani proved different.
He hit the ground running in the mayor’s race, talking to disaffected New Yorkers in Queens and the Bronx who voted for President Trump. He repeatedly visited mosques to hear the concerns of Muslims, hoping to provide a reason for the uninvolved to register to vote.
He won over progressives with a populist message of making the city more affordable, in part by asking corporations and the wealthy to pay more, and he spread his vision through viral social media videos. He accumulated an army of volunteers and small donors, helping his campaign knock on more than one million doors.
The polls were slow to capture his momentum, but he was building something the city had not really seen before: a winning citywide campaign for mayor, built from nothing in a matter of months.
Mr. Mamdani, the likely Democratic primary winner, still faces what is expected to be another bruising general election in November with a broader electorate. His ability to sustain his momentum will be tested, especially with business leaders already plotting how to undermine him.
He will need to further the success he found in immigrant neighborhoods like Kensington in Brooklyn, which is known as Little Bangladesh, and in the enclaves of young professionals, like Long Island City in Queens.
Mr. Mamdani changed the electoral map. In the 14 days leading up to the registration deadline for the Democratic primary, about 37,000 people registered to vote, compared with about 3,000 people in the same period in 2021, according to an analysis by The New York Times. Mr. Mamdani’s campaign had focused on registering voters, and he also appears to have drawn thousands of voters to the primary who did not vote four years ago.
Taylor Sommer, 32, who works in entertainment marketing and lives in the Greenpoint neighborhood in Brooklyn, had never voted in a mayoral primary until this year. She is a fan of Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, who endorsed Mr. Mamdani. She liked how much Mr. Mamdani, a democratic socialist, focused on affordability.
“It’s unreal how much money it costs to live in this city,” she said.
Her neighborhood had one of the highest shares of early voters who supported Mr. Mamdani and did not vote in the 2021 mayoral primary. On some blocks, more than 80 percent of voters backed him.
But it was not just progressive voters who came to the polls. Mr. Mamdani boosted turnout among new voters in Muslim and South Asian neighborhoods. Many immigrants saw themselves in the story of Mr. Mamdani, 33, who is Muslim and was born to Indian parents in Uganda.
Mr. Mamdani, a state assemblyman from Queens, has a commanding lead in the Democratic primary, and seems certain to become the party’s nominee for mayor on Tuesday, when the Board of Elections runs the ranked-choice voting process.
His closest rival, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, had been the front-runner in most every poll. But he ran what even some of his allies said was an uninspired campaign, allowing Mr. Mamdani to gain momentum.
Rich Azzopardi, a spokesman for Mr. Cuomo, said that the campaign met most of its turnout goals, but had not foreseen Mr. Mamdani’s ability to “expand the electorate in such a way that no turnout model or poll was able to capture.”
Some political strategists refer to the group Mr. Mamdani activated as “zero prime voters” — New Yorkers who had not voted in several recent primary elections, and the opposite of the highly coveted “triple prime voters” who can be counted on to vote in every election.
It is difficult to gather definitive information about the ethnicity of voters. But a review by The Times of the likely ethnic makeup of the electorate found that voters with names associated with majority Muslim countries were far more likely to vote in 2025 than in 2021.
The general election, where turnout is typically higher than in a primary, could present new challenges.
In Buffalo, another upstart progressive, India Walton, won the Democratic primary four years ago, upsetting the incumbent, Byron W. Brown. But Mr. Brown defeated Ms. Walton in the general election, running as a write-in candidate, similar to how Mayor Eric Adams is running as an independent this year.
Ms. Walton said in an interview that Mr. Mamdani should keep his “foot on the pedal” and that billionaires and business leaders would “love nothing more than to have a repeat of Buffalo in New York City.”
“They’re not going away just because he had a decisive victory,” she said.
Andrew Bard Epstein, a spokesman for Mr. Mamdani’s campaign, said that contrasting Ms. Walton’s experience with Mr. Mamdani’s was an “apples and oranges” comparison, adding that Mr. Mamdani is getting institutional support from Democrats and unions. Mr. Adams, he said, is an incumbent with a “historically weak approval rating.”
Many of Mr. Mamdani’s supporters seem ready to support him again in November. Rijkaard Alexis, 31, a Haitian immigrant who lives in East Flatbush in Brooklyn, moved to the city as a child and recently became a citizen. He was excited to vote for Mr. Mamdani in his first mayoral primary and liked his proposal to freeze rents on rent-stabilized apartments.
“I watched my mother cry when Obama got elected,” he said. “That hope people had, I fully understand it now.”
Mr. Alexis said he planned to volunteer to canvas for Mr. Mamdani and would vote for him in November.
For months, Mr. Mamdani’s army of canvassers tried to reach new voters and then reminded them to go to the polls. His campaign said it had 46,000 unpaid volunteers who passed out fliers in seven languages.
“I don’t think I’ve ever worked on a campaign that had volunteers who spoke so many different languages,” said Tascha Van Auken, the field director for his campaign.
Mr. Mamdani, a former C-list rapper known as Mr. Cardamom, also released social media videos in several different languages, including Spanish, Urdu and Bengali, working hard to nail the accents. (Former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg was mocked for his robotic Spanish accent.)
He ended up performing well with Latino and Asian voters, though Mr. Cuomo had a clear advantage with Black voters.
Ana María Archila, a chair of the left-leaning Working Families Party, which endorsed Mr. Mamdani as its first choice in the race in May, said that he “engaged people where their attention is with compelling, fun, clear messages.”
She added, “His identity as an immigrant was very meaningful, especially when immigrant communities are being grabbed off the streets.”
Evan Roth Smith, a Democratic political consultant, noted that Mr. Mamdani’s lead in the primary represented more than an increase in new voters.
“Many candidates in New York and around the country run a promise of remaking the electorate,” he said. “Often that simply doesn’t bear fruit. I think the wisdom of the Mamdani campaign strategy was saying yes, we want to grow the tent, but they didn’t leave it at that. They also did the work of convincing the electorate that already existed.”
Some of that convincing included targeting some Trump voters.
Malik Zindani, 30, who lives in Morris Park in the Bronx and came to the United States from Yemen when he was 15, said he voted for Mr. Trump in November and Mr. Mamdani in the primary.
A worker at Qahwah House in Astoria in Queens, Mr. Zindani said that Mr. Mamdani “understands the pain” of New Yorkers.
“The policies, the way he presented himself, that’s what convinced me,” he said. “He showed how much he cares about New Yorkers.”
Nicholas Fandos, Cassidy Jensen, Saurabh Datar and Jonah Smith contributed reporting.
Emma G. Fitzsimmons is the City Hall bureau chief for The Times, covering Mayor Eric Adams and his administration.
Alex Lemonides is a data journalist at The Times, working on a team that analyzes election results and conducts political polls.
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