Subways make you woke and 6 other takeaways from Mamdani's victory

One of the simplest forms of election analysis is often the most correct: the more time you spend around other humans, the more likely you are to vote for progressive candidates. 

But that’s again what the election data bear out from Tuesday night’s decisive win by Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani: people who live along subway lines or rented in the city’s more densely packed areas were more likely to vote for Mamdani, according to maps created by CUNY’s Center for Urban Research; people who owned homes or lived in the subway deserts of the outer boroughs were more likely to vote for Cuomo. This bears out even on Staten Island: Mamdani won the districts on the north side of the island that are closer to the ferry stop, while Cuomo won the vote in the deeper, more suburban parts of the island. Parts of the Rockaways off the A train went for the Democrat; deeper on the peninsula, behind the private gates of Breezy Point, Cuomo captured most of the vote. 

“It follows the subway routes pretty closely,” said Steven Romalewski, director of CUNY Mapping Service for the center. “In those election districts, Mamdani won. He did better than he did overall. Where subways tend not to be, those areas voted for Cuomo.” 

This development isn’t new, but it happens to come on the heels of the two greatest days on the subway of the year: Halloween and the New York City Marathon. The former is a celebration of turning the city into real-life Halloweentown for a few days, a costume fashion show free with the price of admission; the latter is a joyful time to be on the train and just soak in the good vibes, watching hordes of families holding their signs and scurrying uptown to cheer on a racer. The subway is a true modern miracle of engineering, but also a miracle of social invention, and tolerance training. It is, to be frank, everything I love about New York, the big mess of people smushed together and forced to make it work. Conservatives are terrified of it, it pisses you off a lot of times, but man, never forget that it really fucking rules. Sometimes I just sit on my train with no headphones and no book or phone and just look around at everyone, that we all live together in a city that is so impossibly big but feels so very small sometimes.

It’s no coincidence that so much of Mamdani’s winning campaign featured the subway, from his appearance on Subway Takes, to eating a burrito on one of the seats to his campaign’s declaration of victory that preceded even his acceptance speech: a simple video showing subway doors opening at the City Hall station. The mayor has no direct control over the subway system, which is in the hands of the state. If he’s riding it while still in office, he’s at the mercy of the delays and construction and the terrifying car full of teens freshly loosed from school like the rest of us. Amid all that chaos, we travel together, hopefully getting somewhere.

While we recover from Tuesday’s watch party, some more takeaways from the evening’s historic win. 

The cure for loneliness is getting off the internet 

People in the post-pandemic city are still desperate for friends and chances to hang out, and Mamdani’s campaign provided it. The campaign was already lauded for its ground game of supporters and door knockers, which rewarded volunteers with exclusive merch they could only get by getting out into the streets. Its genius came in building and activating a real community that went beyond reposting the campaign’s many charming TikTok videos. 

“It’s honestly what I would prescribe for the loneliness epidemic,” 28-year-old Tal Frieden told The New York Times at a Mamdani Rally in Sunset Park last week. 

There is a vague cultishness to the allure around Mamdani, but the Gen Z voters who talked to the Times didn’t see it that way: they’ve been addled by social media their entire lives and had their prime socializing years short-circuited by the pandemic. People craved something to do, and a cause to believe in, and the campaign provided both. 

“What I love about these events — and the incredible events team that we have, that has put them on — is that they show that politics is about more than just a question of what happens at the ballot box; it's also about a sense of belonging in the city that you call home,” Mamdani told Teen Vogue. “When people come and they have a chance to play soccer and they have a chance to build a team, they have a chance to see themselves as part of a larger story, part of a larger city.”

The campaign’s scavenger hunt in late August drew droves of supporters into the streets to learn more about the city and its history. On the FAQ NYC podcast, co-host Katie Honan has pointed out how much the Cuomo camp had ridiculed this event as frivolous and unserious. But, she countered, was it really so bad to get people out of the house and learning about the city on a beautiful summer day? 

It’s generally a great time in the city to Get Off the Internet, and we hope Mamdani’s administration continues to find ways to bring people together in the real world; that might mean a soccer game, or it might mean standing up to ICE raids in person, but either way, we’re going to need it. 

The results proved us right on Proposition 6

Proposition 6 on the ballot this year proposed moving mayoral elections to coincide with federal elections in an effort to increase turnout. Last week, we made the local media case about why it would be a bad idea to make our consequential — and frankly much more interesting — local elections compete for oxygen against the giant Mega Maid sucking machine of the presidential circus. Our argument was so persuasive, Mamdani cited it as a reason he decided to vote against proposition 6.

But this election showed you don’t need to hitch the city elections to the federal ones to increase turnout; you can achieve the highest voter turnout since the 1960s if you provide people with a candidate to be excited about — and the chance to vote for something, rather than against someone. 

You really should attend an election night watch party 

Sure we get it, election anxiety isn’t the most fun way to spend a night out, as anyone who spent large chunks of election night 2016 heavily breathing on the basement toilet of Branded Saloon (me) can tell you. But local elections are about our local community, and win or lose, you’re better spending that night with the people who are affected by the results. 

We threw a ripper of a watch party on Tuesday night with Soft Power Vote at TV Eye, and there was a line down the block to get in. The election, it turned out, was decided almost instantly, with some outlets calling the results minutes after polls closed. The cheers among Mamdani fans started and didn’t stop for a few hours; while Melton spun tunes and we sang happy birthday to Jess, our community manager. 

Hitching your hopes to a single politician is always a fool’s errand; but the night was full of joy for an optimistic, pluralistic, ecumenical vision of the city that celebrates its diversity, and all the weird and wonderful reasons we all live here despite the rent. It’s a rebuke to the dark cynicism of Cuomo, who only experienced the city through the windshield of his various Dick Dastardly wacky racers car collection while he drives back to his home in the suburbs. 

Being among the people of the city on election night is a reminder that the people who actually live in the city do have an impact on the election. Plus, if you watch alone at home you won’t witness someone using shadow puppet hands to pinch Cuomo’s nipples on the big screen while he concedes. 

The New York Post created an instant collector’s item  

The New York Post front cover really cooked on Wednesday, but not for reasons the Post wanted. Copies of the tabloid and its blaring “RED APPLE” headline reportedly sold out at newsstands across the city. The Post, free of its onus of having to pretend to like Cuomo for a few months, gets a real foil to sink its teeth into again, with an actual socialist to attack, after years of pretending people like Bill de Blasio and Barack Obama were socialists. But will any of that work on someone who is actually a Muslim socialist, and doesn’t care if you call him one? The paper is already for sale on eBay, for upwards of $50. And who says print media is dead? 

But if you missed out, or didn’t want to give Rupert Murdoch your bucks, even ironically, you are in luck: Bushwick studio Secret Riso Club is printing bootleg prints of the cover this weekend for $30, with proceeds going to a local food distribution. 

Tinkering with election results maps is always fun

The aforementioned Center for Urban Research released a comprehensive mapping tool that really lets you drill down on various vectors to see how the city voted. You can see results by age, income, Italian or Jewish surnames or compare this year’s votes to how people voted for Trump in 2024 or in the 2021 mayoral election. It’s pretty fun to play around with, and you can run lots of comparisons by subway lines, NYCHA housing and more. This year’s turnout, and the unique three-man nature of the race, made for some unusual results, Romalewski said. 

“For people who are trying to understand what New York City is thinking, there were definitely some curveballs in the results,” he said. 

'Young' voters ain’t so young any more 

It’d be easy to write off the success of a charming young socialist candidate as another flash fad among “young” voters. It’s true that Mamdani won about 56% of the 18-29 year old vote across the city, but as I took a look around our watch party at TV Eye on Tuesday night, I realized that many of the “young” voters there were actually closer to 50 than they were to 30. 

Indeed, Mamdani won the 40-49 year old vote over Cuomo and Sliwa. Boomer parents probably hit you over the head with that old saw about becoming more conservative with age; but it turns out that to do even the most fundamentally conservative things possible in the city — buy a house, start a family and make home-cooked meals from the grocery store — you have to be a little radical these days.