New York’s mayoral contest has fully surfaced a tension bubbling in city politics for years: the divide between lifelong New Yorkers and young professionals who have recently moved in.
In his 7-point Democratic primary win over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in June, state Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani cleaned up with younger voters who live in some of New York’s most gentrified neighborhoods — including Bushwick, Williamsburg and Bedford-Stuyvesant. Cuomo, meanwhile, edged out Mamdani in majority-Black, outer-borough neighborhoods that have experienced less gentrification, as well as other places like the Upper East Side and Upper West Side, also home to many longtime New Yorkers.
That divide is playing out in the general election, too, where Cuomo is running as a third-party candidate. A CBS News survey last month found that Mamdani held a 51-point edge over Cuomo among voters who have moved to New York within the last 10 years. Among voters who have lived in New York for more than 10 years, Mamdani’s advantage over Cuomo dropped to 19 points.
And among born and raised New Yorkers, Mamdani held a smaller, 7-point advantage over Cuomo. Cuomo and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa, two fixtures of New York politics for decades, combined to win 49% of this demographic.
Surveys show Mamdani with double-digit leads, enjoying a glide path to election next month, even after Mayor Eric Adams dropped his own third-party campaign. Still, the split has set the terms of debate for this fall’s contest — and highlighted what could become a strain on a potential Mamdani mayoralty.
The Rev. Al Sharpton, a fixture in New York City and Democratic politics for decades, said in an interview that he could not recall a citywide election where the split between lifelong New Yorkers and new transplants was as wide.
“Those who have grown up here all their life are more traditional voters who know the traditional battles in the city — when crime was higher, when it was lower, when there was more racial divide, when there were more police issues like stop and frisk,” said Sharpton, the host of MSNBC’s “PoliticsNation.” “Those who are new tend to not know a lot of the history and take a fresh look at the city as they know it.”
Mamdani, the self-described socialist, pulled off an upset victory in the Democratic primary by doggedly campaigning on cost-of-living issues and building an engaging social media presence. Notably, the younger electorate that lifted him to victory has seen rents soar in the Brooklyn and Queens neighborhoods they flocked to in the years following the financial crisis.
Former New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said young professionals coming to New York City in waves from other parts of the country is a “phenomenon which has probably only existed over the last, say, 25-30 years.” For most of New York City history, he continued, new arrivals were overwhelmingly working-class immigrants.
“I can think about the elections with David Dinkins and Giuliani and Bloomberg — I think there was some appeal for Bloomberg with [young professionals], but I don’t think there’s any parallel to the appeal that Zohran has,” de Blasio said.
De Blasio noted that Adams sought to “drive a little bit of a wedge” in his 2021 campaign between longtime residents and newcomers, painting himself as “the candidate of long-term residents.”
Adams said in 2020 that new arrivals to the city were “hijacking” apartments from born and raised New Yorkers. Speaking at Sharpton’s National Action Network headquarters in the city, Adams told those arrivals, “Go back to Iowa.”
“You go back to Ohio,” Adams said. “New York City belongs to the people that was here and made New York City what it is.”
In 2021, de Blasio said the newcomers “did not consolidate around one single candidate” as Adams made his pitch to city lifers.
“It is fair to say it is unprecedented in the last quarter century or so, when we’ve had this influx of young professionals, it’s unprecedented to have them attached to one candidate so deeply,” de Blasio said.
A senior Mamdani adviser, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about the race, framed the divide not around Mamdani’s level of support from young professionals but rather a “broad coalition of immigrant New Yorkers” who back the 33-year-old assemblyman, pointing to strong support in New York’s South Asian, Muslim, Latino and African diaspora communities.
“My gut is it speaks to immigrant New Yorkers who are a big part of his coalition and for whom he spent a ton of time doing real, tangible organizing in neighborhoods that have high immigrant populations,” this person said, adding that Mamdani has sought to expand his coalition, particularly with a focus on winning over Black voters over 50.
This person mentioned Mamdani’s visits to Black churches and with community, business and elected leaders. Mamdani has won endorsements from Carl Heastie, the state Assembly speaker who hails from the Bronx, as well as Rep. Yvette Clark, D-N.Y., who currently heads the Congressional Black Caucus.
“The momentum that he’s feeling is across the city and across demographics, is not limited to just the primary coalition,” this person continued, “although that remains central and important and part of the core base of the campaign.”
Sharpton, who recently met with Mamdani, said he believes Mamdani is making progress with longer-standing New York City residents, “but he’s going to keep working at it.”
“The traditional people are the ones he’s got to convince that he would regard and respect the history of the city and the history of neighborhoods and the history of what they may have faced,” Sharpton said, adding that he told Mamdani: “You’ve got to think of not only how do you reach out in traditional places to win the election — you can maybe win like you did the primary with just some of them — but you can’t govern with all of them against you.”
Mamdani has made efforts to court these young professionals. In June, he released a video targeting voters who live in the city but still voted elsewhere. In roughly a week between when Mamdani released that video and the June 14 registration deadline, more than 54,000 new voters registered to vote — about 80% of all of those who registered that month, per an analysis by Gothamist.
The divide is also apparent between older and younger voters. A Marist College poll conducted before Adams dropped out, which showed Mamdani up 21 points on Cuomo in a four-way race and 10 points ahead in a two-way contest, showed Mamdani running up huge margins among voters under 45 years old. But with voters between 45 and 59 and above 60, Cuomo and Mamdani were neck and neck.
“Zohran’s voters are, ironically, not the people he says he speaks for,” said Bradley Tusk, who ran former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s 2009 re-election campaign.
“If socialism and far left-wing politics is about helping the poor, the poor don’t feel that way about Zohran. The reality is, Zohran’s agenda and politics are extremely appealing to young, upwardly mobile New Yorkers who are newer to the city, worried about their ability to be able to stay here, and like the idea of someone like Zohan disrupting the system,” Tusk continued, comparing that trend to the voters nationally who backed President Donald Trump in 2024.
Mamdani’s pitch to voters has included free buses, universal child care, a rent freeze for stabilized tenants and effective pushback against Trump, who has sought to influence the race and threatened to exert increased control over the city. Mamdani has also appealed to progressives angered by the war in Gaza.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday in Manhattan, Cuomo told NBC News he believed the divide in the race centered on younger voters animated by the war in Gaza, while criticizing Mamdani’s policy proposals as unrealistic.
“I think the divide was younger people, 20 to 30, which would fit with newer transplants to New York and the issue of Gaza, which, by the way, has nothing to do with the mayoral thing,” Cuomo said. “But I believe the issue of Gaza was his primary motivating issue with voters. Freeze the rent doesn’t mean anything. It’s a great slogan. It’s like Donald Trump saying, ‘When I get elected, the price of eggs is going to come down.’ How? Why? What’s the connection? Nobody asks. It’s the dumbing down in politics.”
“So it wasn’t freeze the rent, it wasn’t any of the above,” Cuomo added. “It wasn’t the price of eggs. It was Gaza and younger people.”
The fight between Mamdani and Cuomo, who is running as an independent after losing the primary in June, has gotten more heated in the final weeks of the race. Mamdani has slammed Cuomo, who resigned as governor in 2021 over sexual harassment allegations he denies, for a “record of disgrace.” Cuomo has hit Mamdani for a litany of past statements and for policy aims he paints as a fairy tale wish list.
As Cuomo trails in the polls by a substantial margin, even if the numbers are significantly closer with longtime New York City residents and older voters, Sharpton said voters have opinions of the former governor baked in — good or bad. He added that Cuomo needs to campaign more aggressively.
“During the primaries, he played the Rose Garden strategy where he wasn’t in the Rose Garden,” Sharpton said. “He’s got to go out there and be willing to face detractors, even hecklers, because people will feel like he’s reachable. I’m seeing him start to do that. He’s got to do that.”
On the other hand, both Sharpton and de Blasio said Mamdani is gaining ground with voters who did not back him in the primary.
“I’ve been talking to Black clergy this week,” de Blasio said. “And I’m noting this week, compared to even a couple of weeks ago, a real growing sense that he’s going to win, and people starting to find comfort they didn’t have before, because they see he’s reaching out.”
A Cuomo adviser, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk candidly about the race, said they had not seen a recent citywide race with such a divide between newer New Yorkers and lifelong residents, though this person noted the divide started to become apparent in some downballot races, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s 2018 upset primary win over then-Rep. Joe Crowley.
This person added the former governor knows “where our support is,” outlining a path to victory much like Adams’ in 2021 and mentioning specific outreach to Hindu and Muslim New Yorkers.
“It’s no surprise he won gentrified areas, while we won the traditional Black vote,” this person said of the primary. “We won the Upper East and West Side. In New York, to win the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side, the African American vote and the Jewish vote, that used to be more than enough.”
