🔗 Share this article

Only 48 hours prior to the NYC race for mayor, Michael Lange made a significant electoral prediction – not just who would win citywide, but block by block. Lange, an expert in elections born and raised in New York City, has spent more than ten years in progressive politics and has become something of a well-known figure recently for his thorough analyses into municipal statistics and voter surveys.

He published his extremely precise prediction map – accurately predicting that Zohran Mamdani was victorious while missing Andrew Cuomo’s solid showing – on his newsletter, his platform. Lange has a flair for witty coinages. He highlighted, as an example, the split between the “commie corridor”, stretching from Park Slope to another area to a third locale, where he forecasted (correctly) that Mamdani would triumph by huge margins, and the “capitalist corridor” on Manhattan’s Upper East and Upper West Sides. There, “the Free Press and Wall Street Journal outrank the mainstream paper” in readership and the majority of electors favored the independent, who ran as a conservative-courting independent.

Voting Day Trends and Unexpected Results

How was your election night?

I had to do that since they were dropping approximately 200K ballots into the tally every few minutes! I felt a little nervous at the beginning: Mamdani was ahead the initial ballots by 12 points, but there were two big batches of ballots added after that and his lead dropped from 12% to 8%. It was concerning.

Understand, there was a world in which election day turned out somewhat badly for him, where Cuomo was going to end up basically doubling his votes from the earlier contest. But the winner added half a million votes to his initial base, and this was critical why he won. He campaigned and massively expanded his support from the primary.

Expanding Support

How did Mamdani gain additional support from?

He assembled the alliance that the left long aimed for: it’s multiracial, it’s young, tenants and it’s people squeezed by affordability. He gained significantly with minority communities, working- and middle-class voters, relative to the primary. Plus he boosted his base of liberal progressives, youthful radicals, and Muslims and south Asians. Victory required without making those significant inroads.

He built the alliance that the left long aimed for: multiracial, youthful, tenants and people squeezed by affordability

Additionally, there were some Trump/Mamdani voters – is this significant?

It’s definitely a real thing, confined to Hispanic laborers, south Asians and Muslims. Voters in ethnic enclaves that went for the former president last year went for the progressive this year. However it’s not that he was gaining white working-class voters and Maga voters.

Voter Participation and Effects

One of the big stories of the night was the record participation. Who did that help?

Each candidate. Participation was much greater than I had expected. I figured it could go over 2 million, but it’s closer to 2.3M – that is a huge number of participants. There was a decent anti-Mamdani block, who were motivated, but the Mamdani base was equally driven, and that sufficed to win.

You predicted he’d exceed 50% of the vote. Is he likely for that?

Currently it appears he’s likely to get over 50%. He’s at just over 50% but there’s still probably 200K ballots uncounted as of Wednesday morning. So I don’t think certain, but I believe it’s likely, and I hope he achieves it because afterwards none can claim the Republican was a disruptor.

GOP Decline

Curtis Sliwa, the conservative contender, is the other big story. His support plummeted.

He lost any district in any borough. Not even Tottenville in the borough, which is like an 88% Trump area. That really surprised me. The independent kept Caucasian districts, very wealthy areas and very religiously Jewish areas, and plus gained many conservatives on the island with a high participation. I think occurred significant strategic balloting by the Republicans. They were doing it prior to Trump endorsed for Cuomo, but it assisted. It might have changed the outcome unless the winning alliance hadn’t grown.

Progressive Strongholds

Regarding your much mentioned “commie corridor” – was support for Mamdani overwhelming in those areas of the boroughs?

I think there was some weakening of the progressive zone in some areas like Astoria or Greenpoint that have more older white ethnic folks. In Astoria, instance, the Greek landlords and homeowners all went for Cuomo. Thus there existed some opposition. But overall, mostly the commie corridor is a key factor why Zohran won – he was polling between 77% and 83% in specific neighborhoods.

Jewish Voters

In the lead-up to the election we reported on if the candidate was making inroads with Jewish New Yorkers. Is there any suggestion that he did?

There are areas with a lot of secular and more progressive-leaning Jews – like Park Slope and Morningside Heights – where he performed strongly. But in the wealthy Jewish communities such as the Upper East Side, his position on Israel definitely mattered there. Similarly in the more middle-class Jewish areas including Forest Hills, Rego Park, or Bronx areas – they favored the independent. And also, there are Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union in the borough, who were pretty staunchly Cuomo. So I don’t know if there were major surprises on this one, but he retained left-leaning areas and including sections of the another locale by big margins.

Long-Term Significance

Has Mamdani rewritten what the city represents in politics? Will the commie corridor become a launch pad for leftwing candidates?

Absolutely, it’s not accidental that some of the biggest political leaders from progressives come from a few areas in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. I believe that we’ll see more of that – people will emerge from these neighborhoods to be elevated nationally.

But I believe that each urban center in America could develop their own commie corridor. Urban places are the epicenters of leftwing power in the nation – because youth reside there, people rent and they are places where individuals struggle by the inequalities exist.