On his way to becoming mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani put together a coalition of well-to-do liberals in Brownstone Brooklyn, working class and immigrant neighborhoods in Queens, the Bronx and Brooklyn and Black voters across the city to pull off a decisive victory over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa on Tuesday. The Center for Urban Research at CUNY put together a detailed results map, which coupled with exit polling from a coalition of major media outlets offers some notable takeaways on voter behavior.
2 million voters!
This mayoral general election saw a stunning 84% increase in voter turnout compared to 2021. The city hasn’t seen 2 million voters show up since 1969, when incumbent John Lindsay won on the Liberal line after losing the Republican primary. While 2 million doesn’t come close to the 5.1 voters registered in New York City, the surge was remarkable and meant that Zohran Mamdani alone got almost as many votes as the total that were cast in the 2021 general election. “The turnout itself is off the charts citywide, and there were some interesting turnout increases in interesting areas of the city,” said Steve Romalewski, an election mapmaker at the CUNY Center for Urban Research. He said Mamdani’s margins in Brooklyn neighborhoods like Park Slope, Bed-Stuy, Bushwick and Greenpoint were similar to what Eric Adams got in 2021, “but the key difference is in many of these election districts, the turnout was two or three times what it was in 2021.” Cuomo, meanwhile, juiced turnout in southern Brooklyn. For example, one Borough Park election district that strongly went for Cuomo saw a five-fold increase from 241 votes cast in 2021 to 1139 in 2025.
Mamdani dominates in Black neighborhoods
While Mamdani struggled to win over Black voters in the primary election, with Cuomo surpassing the young Democratic nominee by 16 points in predominantly Black neighborhoods, during the general election Mamdani won over the city’s Black voters. “The Black vote swung dramatically,” said elections expert Michael Lange. “It’s the reason (Mamdani) not only got 50% but that he won at all.” On Tuesday night, the mayor-elect won 63% of the vote in districts with 40% or more Black eligible voters, compared to Cuomo’s 33%. Exit polling showed Mamdani with a 19 point lead among Black voters. The demographic switch came after Cuomo capitalized on his appeal to “real New Yorkers” in the final stretch of his campaign, painting himself as the candidate against gentrification. While Mamdani dominated Black neighborhoods, he also swept areas of the city where Black New Yorkers have been displaced, winning in both Clinton Hill and western Bed-Stuy for example.
Mamdani and Cuomo split the wealthier neighborhoods, Mamdani won the middle class
Mamdani won 51% of the vote in election districts in census tracts where the median household income is over $125,000. He especially ran up the numbers in brownstone Brooklyn neighborhoods like Park Slope, South Slope, Fort Greene and Prospect Heights and in North Brooklyn neighborhoods like Greenpoint and East Williamsburg. Cuomo did better in the wealthiest neighborhoods of Manhattan, including the Upper East Side. In the 70s and 80s between Central Park and Park Avenue, he maintained about 80% support. In the city’s more low-income neighborhoods, where median household income is below $45,000, Mamdani got 52% of the votes, but his lead over Cuomo grew to 10 points. GOP candidate Curtis Sliwa got 5%, and Cuomo got 42%. Interestingly, exit polling showed that Cuomo got more support than Mamdani from both extremes of income: people with over $300,000 per year and people with under $30,000. Mamdani secured majorities from people making $30,000 to $199,000, exit polling showed.
Cuomo dominates in Jewish neighborhoods
In neighborhoods with 10% or more registered voters with Jewish surnames, Cuomo bested Mamdani by 20 points, securing 58% of the votes, according to the Center for Urban Research map. Exit polling found that Cuomo secured 64% of the Jewish vote, while Mamdani got 32%. The former governor’s win with Jewish New Yorkers comes after Cuomo, and others, called Mamdani antisemitic and divisive due to his staunch criticism of Israel. Despite Cuomo’s win, Mamdani has garnered support among young Jewish New Yorkers who have canvassed for him, and days before the election received the endorsement of Rabbi Moshe Indig, a political leader in the city’s Satmar Hasidic community. As mayor-elect, Mamdani is set to lead a city with the largest Jewish population outside of Israel. In his victory speech on Tuesday night, Mamdani pledged to protect Jewish New Yorkers and “not waver in the fight against the scourge of antisemitism.”
Affordable housing ballot measures pass citywide but not in some of the districts that have built the least affordable housing
The three controversial ballot proposals that aimed to “fast-track” the way affordable housing is built in the city prevailed on election night with more than 57% of voters citywide saying “yes.” But the areas where the least amount of affordable housing has been built over the past decade clearly overlap with the areas where more voters opposed the proposals. “It’s no surprise that the voting pattern we saw on Election Day match up to the patterns of where housing has and hasn’t been built over the past many years, and why we are so excited about the ballot questions passing,” said Andrew Fine, chief of staff and policy director at pro-development organization Open New York. Proponents of the ballot measures say that with its passing, and Mamdani’s win, affordable housing will be built more equitably across all districts in the city.