In a surprising victory in the primary election for the Democratic mayoral candidate, Zohran Mamdani, a state assemblyman from the Queens district, largely benefited from the support of voters in Brooklyn and Manhattan. The three main Chinese residential areas – Manhattan’s Chinatown, Brooklyn’s Eighth Avenue, and Queens’ Flushing – contributed a significant number of votes.
According to early data from the Tuesday primary, the 33-year-old state assemblyman from Queens easily defeated former Governor Andrew Cuomo in the predominantly white brownstone neighborhoods of Brooklyn Heights, Fort Greene, and surrounding areas.
In the pre-election polls conducted with white and Asian voters, Mamdani had a clear advantage, a fact further confirmed by the actual voting numbers.
According to the “New York City Mayor Democratic Primary Data Map,” yellow represents Mamdani while green represents Cuomo. Mamdani’s stronghold was evident in most of the polling stations in Manhattan’s Chinatown, as seen in District 65021 on Bayard Street, where 68% of votes went to Mamdani, while 13% went to Cuomo. Link: [https://tinyurl.com/48p8yypj](https://tinyurl.com/48p8yypj)
Taking Sunset Park’s Eighth Avenue as an example, the voting map also displayed a sea of yellow. In District 49011, Mamdani received 50% of the votes, while Cuomo garnered 38%.
In Queens’ Flushing, the map showed a mixed yellow-green appearance. Using Main Street as the dividing line, in District 40014, Cuomo emerged victorious with 50% of the votes, while Mamdani received 38%. However, just a street away in District 40024, Cuomo only got 30%, while Mamdani received 57%.
Unofficial results from the first round of ranked-choice voting revealed that Mamdani’s highest voting rates were in Brooklyn, representing areas like Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Crown Heights.
Data showed that Cuomo’s highest voting rates were in the Upper East Side and Midtown East in Manhattan, as well as Roosevelt Island.
More surprisingly, in the Kensington community with a significant Orthodox Jewish population, Mamdani’s vote share exceeded 70% in some areas.
Following the election on Tuesday, Cuomo admitted that Mamdani had “inspired a lot of young people.” According to Mamdani’s official website, over 40,000 young New Yorkers volunteered for his campaign and knocked on 1.5 million doors.
Mamdani, a Muslim of Indian descent born in Uganda who moved to the United States at the age of 7, comes from a background where his mother is a film producer and his father is a scholar at Columbia University. He advocates for “reducing the cost of living in New York” and providing socialist systems such as public food markets, free buses, and free daycare for citizens. If elected in November, he will become the youngest mayor of New York City and the first Muslim mayor.