In NYC, Election Day arrives with all eyes on Jewish voters

Many New Yorkers are thinking far beyond the five boroughs as they cast their votes in an election some see as a referendum on the Middle East.

Jewish and Muslim New Yorkers — two populations of about the same size, both nearing 1 million — are being closely watched today, as views on Israel, Palestine, antisemitism and Islamophobia mobilize voters with intense enthusiasm.

Polls show Cuomo, a proud defender of Israel, leading with Jewish voters. And Mamdani’s longtime pro-Palestinian activism tapped into a movement of New Yorkers galvanized by the Gaza war, pollsters say.

“There’s a large swath of New Yorkers, particularly those that were showing up at these protests, who in 2025 were looking for something to latch on to, some sort of organized effort,” Democratic pollster Adam Carlson told The New York Times. “There’s a lot of natural overlap between those groups, and I think that just fueled momentum.”

Some anti-Zionist Jews, like members of the increasingly influential group Jewish Voice for Peace, strengthened Mamdani’s rise as he won the primary and held onto a strong lead in general election for months. But many others say they are worried about Mamdani’s views on Israel setting the stage for a “political normalization” of anti-Zionism that can bleed into antisemitism.

Polls are open until 9 p.m. today, and election officials say results could come within an hour of that time. Find your polling site here.

If Mamdani is elected mayor, how could he actually take action on his pro-Palestinian advocacy?

We dug into Mamdani’s greatest push for a new Israel policy in the state Assembly, where he proposed the bill “Not On Our Dime” to target donations to Israeli settlements. The legislation, which never advanced, faced a backlash from lawmakers in both parties, including Jewish Democrats.

Shortly after winning his Assembly seat in 2020, Mamdani also called for a boycott of Cornell Tech on Roosevelt Island, a campus of Cornell University that partners with Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, because of the Israeli university’s ties to the military. His comment on the “Talking Palestine” podcast with Sumaya Awad resurfaced during the primary and again this week after a spokeswoman told The New York Times that, if elected, he would assess the Cornell partnership.

Mamdani has said he does not intend to invest city funds in Israel bonds as mayor, in keeping with current Comptroller Brad Lander’s decision in 2023. But we also found that two of New York City’s five public pension funds could be vulnerable to a mayor-backed divestment push.

Mamdani would be able to stack the boards of these two pension funds to put divestment from Israel on the table, and his supporters are pushing for that move.

He will also face pressure from the Democratic Socialists of America, which counts him as a member, to implement boycott, divestment and sanction moves against Israel.

On Sunday, the party’s “NYC Palestine Policy Committee” held a meeting to “iron out policies that the anti-war working group membership would like to see implemented at the municipal level,” according to a schedule on the D.S.A. website.

Cuomo got an official endorsement last night from President Trump, who has frequently opined on the race and insulted all of the candidates.

“Whether you personally like Andrew Cuomo or not, you really have no choice,” Trump said in a Truth Social post. “You must vote for him, and hope he does a fantastic job. He is capable of it, Mamdani is not!”

Trump also warned voters away from Republican nominee Sliwa, who is polling third. “A vote for Curtis Sliwa (who looks much better without the beret!) is a vote for Mamdani,” he said, referencing the red hat that Sliwa wears as the founder of the Guardian Angels.

Cuomo is balancing his outreach to Republican voters with criticism of the president, who is deeply unpopular in New York City. “The president is right. A vote for Sliwa is a vote for Mamdani, and that’s why this election is now up to the Republicans,” he said in response to Trump’s post on 77 WABC.

Mamdani, who has repeatedly linked Cuomo to Trump, pounced on the endorsement. “The MAGA movement’s embrace of Andrew Cuomo is reflective of Donald Trump’s understanding that this would be the best mayor for him,” he said in Astoria, according to Politico.

Elon Musk also urged New Yorkers to vote for Cuomo, and to “bear in mind that a vote for Curtis is really a vote for Mumdumi or whatever his name is.”