It is still exceedingly difficult to contextualise what exactly the ascension of Zohran Mamdani means, for America and beyond. A New York City mayor is only in charge of New York City; Mamdani’s policy successes and failures will not leave the five boroughs. Yet it is, undeniably, one of the most remarkable political stories of our age: a 34-year-old Muslim democratic socialist, who polled close to zero per cent a year ago, will now head up, come January, America’s largest police and education departments, and be in charge of a budget in excess of $100bn.
There are few, if any, parallels in US politics to draw upon. The closest might be Barack Obama and Donald Trump. A year before either was elected president, few believed it was possible. Obama, like Mamdani, was a Democrat with a foreign-sounding name directly challenging his party’s establishment. America had never elected a black president and the 2008 Democratic nomination, for many months, seemed like Hillary Clinton’s for the taking. Yet Obama, through a contested primary that was far more bitter than most remember, triumphed, and breezed to the presidency against the geriatric John McCain.
Mamdani, who is fiercely anti-Trump, has this in common with the frothing, incendiary president: he is an outsider who completely upended his party’s establishment, far more, even, than Obama did in 2008. Obama, ultimately, was a comfortable fit for the Democrats – a popular US senator who had made history in the way they always hoped was possible. Democratic elites didn’t shudder at the prospect of President Obama. They simply weren’t sure if he could win.
The same cannot be said for Mamdani. Like Trump, he was furiously resisted in his party’s primary and – again, like Trump – struggled to win the endorsements of party mandarins once he became the nominee. Trump, in 2016, was scorned by House speaker Paul Ryan after the notorious Access Hollywood tape leaked. Mamdani did eventually win a tepid endorsement from Hakeem Jeffries, the Democrat who is now the House minority leader, but he was completely shut out by Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader. Mamdani ran a scandal-free campaign, but his pro-Palestine views were alienating to a Democratic establishment that has been led by Israel hawks for most of the modern era.
Now Mamdani is the mayor-elect, having won the highest-turnout mayoral election in New York since at least 1969. Andrew Cuomo, the disgraced former governor who lost to Mamdani in the primary and continued to campaign in the general election as an independent, made it competitive, forging a coalition of conservative Democrats, independents and Republicans – he courted and won an endorsement from Trump – and bashing Mamdani in deeply personal terms. The final days of the campaign were defined by an Islamophobia that Cuomo stoked, and he implied repeatedly that the Uganda-born Mamdani was too alien and dangerous to govern New York. Political action committees funded by billionaires, including the former mayor Michael Bloomberg, spent tens of millions of dollars against the young socialist.
Yet Mamdani won on a wave of youth support hungry for change. He also won over many ordinary Democrats, including older black voters, who were ready to back the Democratic nominee. He has become, in victory, a national and global phenomenon, and one leftists everywhere have looked to as a beacon. What are the lessons of Mamdani’s triumph? Neither his immense charisma nor his savvy use of social media is easily replicable. He is a generational political talent, and those do not typically appear in the wild. But his message discipline can be learned: in an era of high inflation and rising income inequality, his relentless focus on affordability and the cost of living won him many converts. He never wavered, and avoided thornier cultural topics – from the trans debate to DEI – that have tripped up other Democrats.
Governing will be a far greater challenge than campaigning. Even seasoned politicians find the mayoralty of New York beguiling. Crises are a constant. There are the terrorist attacks, superstorms and pandemics. There are the police shootings of civilians that can trigger mass uprisings, and the killings of police officers that can turn a department against the mayor. For Mamdani, there is the added challenge of Trump, who views the Muslim socialist as his new foil and may seek to punish the city with a flood of Ice agents and a National Guard invasion. Trump has also vowed to withhold federal funds from the city.
The campaign promises Mamdani made are less lofty than his critics portrayed. A universal childcare programme is expensive, totalling up to $6bn a year, but it’s a goal the Democratic governor of New York supports, and it polls well. Free buses are much cheaper, though opposed by the governor, who ultimately controls the city’s public transport. But Mamdani will have the political capital to fight for these policies. A rent freeze on rent-stabilised apartments is within the mayor’s power, and it will happen eventually, even if he needs to contend with more conservative appointees to the city’s rent board. Five city-run supermarkets are also plenty achievable.
Mamdani’s opposition is entrenched. The city’s billionaire class largely wants him to fail, and Trump is looming to make his life as difficult as possible. The advantage the mayor-to-be does enjoy is a fanbase unlike any other local politician in the history of the city. Mamdani can pack arenas and boasts a combined Instagram and TikTok following north of 12 million. His most faithful supporters won’t readily quit him. In any political clash, they’ll be his ballast. He will never be alone.
[Further reading: All your data belongs to us: the rise of Palantir]
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This article appears in the 13 Nov 2025 issue of the New Statesman, What Keir won't hear