Can anything stop Zohran Mamdani?
An unpopular mayor, a disliked former governor, and a Republican are poor alternatives for anti-Mamdani forces to rally around
🍺 What’s on tap 🚰
Today’s newsletter features:
The Opening Bell: Must-read stories about elections and politics.
The Frontrunner: Can anti-Mamdani forces find any way to beat the insurgent Democratic nominee in New York City’s mayoral race?
Around the Corner: Upcoming elections we’re tracking at DDHQ.
🔔 The Opening Bell 🐏
Must-read stories about elections and politics.
The center-left think tank Third Way released a memo highlighting 45 words and phrases that Democratic politicians should not use to avoid seeming out of touch with the average American.
In Texas, longtime Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett said he will not run for reelection against fellow Democratic Rep. Greg Casar in a new Austin-based district if the state’s new congressional map is not overturned by the courts.
In Virginia, some Republicans are looking to triage the 2025 statewide contests for governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general. Fearing losses elsewhere, a GOP group is pushing for donors to concentrate on helping Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares to win reelection.
Over at The Argument, Lakshya Jain defends the use of polling as an effective way to measure public opinion and understand shifts in Americans’ views on important political and social issues.
📊 The Frontrunner 📈
Why anti-Mamdani forces face an uphill battle
How do you solve a problem like Zohran Mamdani?
That’s the question riling some moderate Democrats, Republicans, developers, financiers, and others who oppose Mamdani in New York City’s 2025 mayoral election. After the Democratic socialist state legislator won the June 24 Democratic primary, the amalgamation of a competitive anti-Mamdani coalition seemed challenging, but plausible. Yet with the election now just over two months away, Mamdani’s foes appear no closer to working out a realistic solution.
Fact is, Mamdani holds a clear advantage over the other main contenders in the mayoral race. In Decision Desk HQ’s polling average, he is running just shy of 40% among voters. That’s short of a majority, but the figure puts Mamdani well ahead of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whose independent candidacy is attracting 25% after he lost the Democratic primary to Mamdani. Behind them are Curtis Sliwa (15%), the Republican nominee, and incumbent Mayor Eric Adams (11%), a Democrat who is seeking reelection as an independent.1
Since mid-July, five publicly-released surveys have found Mamdani ahead by at least 12 percentage points over Cuomo. In those polls, the former governor has not surpassed 25%, Sliwa has peaked at 18%, and Adams has not topped 11%. Tellingly, the prediction markets view a Mamdani victory in November as quite likely, although not guaranteed. Both Polymarket and Kalshi now give him better than a 4 in 5 shot at winning.
However, the conditions still exist whereby a competitive anti-Mamdani coalition could materialize. Despite being his party’s nominee, Mamdani hasn’t yet received support from many high-ranking Democrats in New York — figures such as Gov. Kathy Hochul, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries have not endorsed him. Many of the city’s wealthy business elite oppose Mamdani and could more aggressively finance another contender and mount a significant outside spending blitz against the frontrunner.
Just consider the potential support for an anti-Mamdani coalition if you aggregate the support for the candidates other than Mamdani.2 Four of five polls since mid-July have found that potential coalition tied or ahead of Mamdani, with only Mamdani’s strongest poll from pro-Mamdani Zenith Research putting the Democratic nominee ahead. Three of those four polls have the grouped opposition support at 50% or higher.
But the reality on the ground may make consolidating this anti-Mamdani support all but impossible. First and foremost, none of Mamdani’s opponents has the profile to become a strong rallying point for the opposition. Namely, they all make Mamdani look like a beloved figure among New Yorkers. On average, slightly more voters rate Mamdani favorably than unfavorably, whereas they clearly rate each of Cuomo, Sliwa, and Adams much more negatively.
At worst, Mamdani’s net favorability has hovered around zero in three recent polls, but that unremarkable figure still rises well ahead of his opponents’ numbers. At best, Cuomo’s net favorability has fallen in the negative mid-teens, while Sliwa’s top showing was around -10. For his part, Adams is a remarkably unpopular incumbent mayor. A Siena Research Institute survey in early August gave Adams his strongest net favorability mark: -28.
Tied into their low favorability numbers, each alternative has clear shortcomings. Cuomo resigned from the governorship in 2021 in the face of multiple sexual harassment allegations. Furthermore, his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic as governor continues to affect views of Cuomo, particularly the deaths of many nursing home patients around the state.
Adams has dealt with multiple corruption allegations and scandals. Although federal authorities ultimately dropped charges against Adams, the mayor had faced indictments over allegations of bribery, fraud, and conspiracy. Many advisers in Adams’s inner circle now face charges or allegations for similar actions. In some cases, the stories border on farce: Just last week, an Adams associate attempted to hand a reporter a potato chip bag stuffed with money.
Although Sliwa has the fewest scandal marks against him of Mamdani’s opponents, he suffers from another problem: He’s a Republican in dark-blue New York City. Sliwa won 28% as the Republican standard-bearer against Adams in 2021, so it’s difficult to see him building substantially on that showing. And for all the talk about the gains President Donald Trump made across his hometown in last year’s presidential election — absolutely a significant shift — Gotham remains a solidly Democratic locale.
At the moment, only Cuomo seems to have a path to bringing enough of these voters together to give Mamdani a challenge. And even then, Cuomo is far from a sure thing. In surveys testing alternative matchups in the mayoral race, Cuomo and Mamdani ran about even in a late July poll from Wick, while the more recent Gotham Polling & Analytics/AARP poll gave Mamdani an 11-point edge over Cuomo. Meanwhile, the Gotham/AARP survey also gave Mamdani more than 20-point leads over Adams or Sliwa in head-to-head tests. Across most surveys, a Cuomo withdrawal tends to produce a less competitive race for Mamdani.
Cuomo is aware that he is likely the best vehicle to maximize support for an anti-Mamdani candidate. Politico reported last week that Cuomo told high-roller donors that he believes Trump will work on behalf of Cuomo’s bid behind closed doors. The commander-in-chief’s antipathy for Mamdani could prompt him to help coalesce the anti-Mamdani forces around one candidate. However, the choice to link success with Trump wouldn’t necessarily endear that candidate to New York City voters. In Siena’s recent poll, just 30% of registered voters in the city approved of Trump’s presidency, compared with 69% who disapproved. Mamdani’s campaign has already worked to connect Cuomo and Trump by portraying both as self-serving politicians who help their donors, not working people.
All of this points to the broader problem of consolidating behind one candidate. One challenge is simply convincing any of the alternatives that they should be the ones to drop out. For instance, Adams has consistently denied any intention to withdraw, and he has actually outraised Cuomo in private funding, $6.8 million to $4.6 million. (The city’s campaign finance board has not allowed Adams to accept public matching funds due to potential violations of campaign finance rules.)
Logistical challenges could get in the way of consolidation, too. Independent Jim Walden, running in a distant fifth place, has called for a “drop-out challenge” in which the lower-polling opponents to Mamdani withdraw and rally behind one candidate. However, as City & State New York recently noted, campaign finance rules would potentially make dropping out costly for any candidate who had accepted public matching funds for their campaigns. Candidates who fail to actively campaign after accepting funds may be on the hook for paying back the money they received.
Even if Cuomo has the strongest case to be the anti-Mamdani standard-bearer, the groups that supported him in the primary haven’t splashed the same kind of cash in the general. Overall, outside groups spent $26.4 million supporting Cuomo or opposing Mamdani in the primary, but they have spent almost nothing on the November campaign. Fix the City, a pro-Cuomo group and the biggest spender, invested $22.4 million during the primary, but as of Aug. 24 had made no major expenditures in the two months since.
That said, Fix the City isn’t asleep. The group continues to raise money from large donors and recently launched an effort to counter Mamdani’s organizing strength by building a stronger group of anti-Mamdani campaign volunteers and infrastructure. Nevertheless, the group’s lack of outlays is striking considering its spending in the primary, and while an organizational effort has obvious merit, it can’t solve the anti-Mamdani forces’ problem of multiple candidates.
As we get closer to Election Day, it’s becoming harder to see how an anti-Mamdani coalition can effectively bring together its disparate elements to defeat the Democratic nominee. If the main contenders all remain in the race, Mamdani could become the first New York mayor elected with notably less than 50% since John Lindsay won reelection in 1969 with 42%.
📆 Around the Corner 📌
Upcoming elections on the horizon.
September 9, 2025
VA-11 Special Election
September 23, 2025
AZ-07 Special Election
October 7, 2025
TN-07 Special Election Primary
Cuomo and Adams are running as independents on third-party ballot lines created for this election.
Some surveys also include independent Jim Walden as a candidate for respondents to consider, along with the other main three contenders.