Mamdani Tops First Poll in Five-Person Sprint to November

Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani officially won the Democratic primary as of July 1 after the third round of ranked-choice voting, pulling 56 percent of the votes to runner-up Andrew Cuomo’s 44-percent tally. Now the race shifts to the big prize in November.

And days after the primary results were tallied, the first post-primary poll showed Mamdani with a comfortable lead over the major candidates in the race.

“I am humbled by the support of more than 545,000 New Yorkers in last week’s primary,” Mamdani wrote in a statement after the ranked-choice votes were tallied July 1. “This is just the beginning of our expanding coalition to make New York City affordable. And we will do it together.”

The first post-primary poll, released by American Pulse days after the July 1 tally, shows Mamdani as the front-runner with support from 35 percent of expected general election voters to 29 percent for former Governor Andrew Cuomo; 16 percent for Republican Curtis Sliwa, founder of the Guardian Angels; 14 percent for Mayor Eric Adams, who skipped the Dem primary to run on two independent lines; and 1 percent for businessman Jim Walden. The poll also showed that cost of living was the No. 1 issue for 31 percent of voters, while 21 percent listed public safety as the top issue.

As Democrats try to unite behind Mamdani, there has been talk in some circles that Sliwa and Cuomo should drop out in favor of Adams, who was elected as a Democrat in 2021 but is running as an independent with support from Trump. But in an appearance on ABC Eyewitness show Up Front with Bill Ritter on July 7 Sliwa insisted he has no intention of dropping out.

”Why should Cuomo or Sliwa drop out when Adams is in fourth?” Sliwa asked, insisting that the mayor should drop out. “He’s been a failed mayor.”

Then Adams in an appearance on CNBC on July 7 said that Cuomo was entreating the mayor to drop out. And that did not go down well with hizzoner. “I said, ‘Andrew: are you that level of arrogance? . . . I’m the sitting mayor of the City of New York and you expect me to step aside when you just lost to Zohran by 12 points?’ ”

Adams announced his independent ticket in a video just one day after a judge dismissed his five-count federal corruption indictment but did not hold his official campaign launch until June 26, in a raucous rally on the steps of City Hall.

In his kickoff, he said he is bringing crime down and attacked Mamdani for what he said was lack of experience and Cuomo for poor decisions on bail reform and COVID. “They have a record of tweets, I have a record on these streets, a record of results; they talk about problems, I fix them, all right? That’s the difference,” Adams said. “You don’t lead this city from a soapbox. You lead it from the ground, up.”

But Adams has repeatedly failed to criticize President Trump even when, post-primary, Trump threatened to arrest Mamdani if he interferes with ICE agents in New York. Adams’s cooperation with Trump on the immigration crackdown has made Adams toxic in Democratic circles. Trump certainly seems to be pulling for Adams. “Adams is a very good person, I helped him out a little,” Trump remarked after Mamdani’s primary win. Trump called the Democratic nominee “a communist.”

Adams in his run is clearly aiming at a core base. At the campaign to jump-start his campaign, Adams was joined by religious and civic leaders drawn mainly from the black and brown communities. At one point, he emphasized that his administration had removed 20,000 guns, largely from the “hands of black and brown people,” who he said were committing crimes largely against members of the black and brown community.

“Gun arrests at record highs,” Adams said at the kickoff. “Removals of guns at record highs. And what did we do with our economy? Five hundred thousand new jobs since this administration. More jobs in New York in the city’s history, folks. Tech is booming. Tourism is back. Broadway has the best 12 months in recorded history. Construction is growing, and, yes, Times Square is alive again.”

Adams has also said he expects the current mayoral race to be “the most exciting in NYC history.”

Despite Adams’s enthusiasm, his approval ratings are still at an all-time low as many voters worry about public safety on the streets and subways, even as the mayor points to declining crime stats over the past two years. His Independent campaign inherently faces an uphill battle in a city where 70 percent of voters are registered Democrats.

Unlike Adams, with his relentless confidence, Cuomo, the once-projected winner of the Dem primary who announced his “Fight and Deliver” ballot back in May, revealed in his concession speech that he will assess the ranked-choice voting breakdown and deliberate his next steps. But by all indications so far, he is staying in.

Mamdani, 33, was unapologetic, and in his post-primary remarks pointed out that 40 percent of the population in NYC was born outside the US. His primary run as a Democratic Socialist got the attention of thousands of previous non-voters, drastically changing this year’s electoral map. According to a New York Times analysis, about 37,000 people were newly registered to vote for the first time in the recently concluded Dem primary, compared with only about 3,000 newly registered voters back in 2021.

Cuomo had been amplifying his more centrist campaign but has yet to say if he will campaign on the Independent line. On the campaign trail before the primar, he said he was the only one who can “save a city in crisis.”

Views on the conflicts in the Middle East may also be a big factor. Cuomo has always been strongly pro-Israel, as has been Adams. Jewish voters remain sharply divided on their perception of Mamdani, who, if he wins, would be the first Muslim and South Asian person to win.

But Mamdani has been at the forefront of the battle against Trump’s ICE crackdown on migrants. “For too long we have seen leaders who are unwilling to fight back against what is an attack, not just on immigrants, but on the very fabric of the city in this country,” Mamdani said in one post-primary interview with Eyewitness News. “And I am ready to do just that.”

His push to “freeze the rent” if elected mayor played well in the primary and is expected to be an issue in the campaign as the Rent Guidelines Board appointed by Adams recently approved rent hikes that could go as high as 4.5 percent on two-year leases for stabilized apartments.

Running and winning a mayoral election on an Independent or third-party line is rare. Mike Bloomberg, who originally won the mayoralty election as a Republican in 2001, ran and won in 2009 for a third term as a registered Independent. Before that, the last Independent to run and win was John Lindsay, who won as a Republican in 1965, then lost the Republican nomination in 1969 and went on to run and win on the Liberal party line.