With just one day until New York City voters pick their next mayor, polls give Zohran Mamdani an advantage over Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa.
Newsweek reached out to each of their campaigns for comment via email.
Why It Matters
New York City voters typically favor Democrats by wide margins, but this year’s mayoral race has exposed ideological divides within the party.
Mamdani, a democratic socialist who has embraced policies such as city-run grocery stories and free bus services, beat Cuomo, a former Democrat New York governor, in the primary this summer. However, Cuomo opted to remain in the race and launched an independent campaign in the general election in hopes of building a coalition of more centrist Democrats and Republicans. Meanwhile, Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels, a volunteer crime prevention organization, is running on the Republican line, but has stalled in the polls.
The election has national implications. Republicans have already sought to tie Democrats to Mamdani in hopes of casting the party as embracing socialism ahead of the midterms—even as many Democrats have distanced themselves from him. Whoever prevails will remain a national figure whose efforts to address the city’s challenges surrounding affordability and public safety will continue to garner attention over the coming years.
What to Know
Each candidate spent the weekend working to get their supporters to the voting booth in the final stretch of the campaign. More than 735,000 New Yorkers cast their ballots early in the race, according to the New York City Board of Elections.
The latest round of polls showed Mamdani hold onto his lead against Cuomo and Sliwa.
Mamdani has garnered national attention over his progressive policies. He has earned support from prominent progressives like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, and Senator Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent. But other Democrats have responded with skepticism—Senate Minority Leader, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York for instance, has declined to endorse him. Democratic critics have lamented Mamdani’s policies as unrealistic and have criticized his stance on Israel.
In the latest AtlasIntel poll, 41 percent of respondents said they would vote for Mamdani, while Cuomo and Sliwa’s support stood at 34 percent and 24 percent, respectively. It surveyed 1,587 likely voters from October 25-30 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
A Fox News poll gave Mamdani 47 percent of the vote, compared to Cuomo’s 31 percent and Sliwa’s 15 percent. It surveyed 1,107 New York City registered voters from October 24-28 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
A Marist University poll told a similar story—48 percent of respondents said they would vote for Mamdani, while 32 percent said they would vote for Cuomo and 16 percent said they would vote for Sliwa. It surveyed 792 likely voters from October 24-28 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.3 percentage points.
Meanwhile, an Emerson College poll showed Mamdani with 51 percent of the vote, while Cuomo and Sliwa received 26 percent and 21 percent, respectively. It surveyed 640 likely voters from October 25-27 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.
Mamdani will be seeking to convince left-leaning voters to show out in the last day of the election.
His coalition is based around younger voters. According to the Marist poll, 64 percent of voters younger than 45 years old are planning to back Mamdani. Among those 45 or older, only 38 percent plan to back him. Mamdani also is winning 39 percent of white voters, 56 percent of Black voters and 55 percent of Latino voters, the poll found.
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What People Are Saying
Rich Azzopardi, a spokesperson for Andrew Cuomo, told Newsweek last week: “For weeks this has been a tightening race with early voting showing a surge of older voters—the exact inverse of the primary—and turnout on track for between 1.9 and 2 million. With those dynamics, every poll out there is essentially meaningless from this point out.”
Emerson College Polling Director Spencer Kimball wrote in a memo: “Mamdani appears to have built a coalition across key demographics, increasing his margin among Black voters since last month, from 50 percent to 71 percent, whereas Cuomo dropped 10 points among Black voters since September. Mamdani continues to have a base of young voters; 69 percent of voters under 50 support him, whereas 37 percent of voters over 50 support Mamdani, while 31 percent support Cuomo and 28 percent Sliwa.”
CNN data analyst Harry Enten wrote last week on X: “Unless there’s a historically unprecedented poll miss, some Cuomo fans are living in a fantasy world when it comes to the NYC mayoral race. Mamdani has, if anything, widened his big lead since September. Also, early voting stats are consistent with polls showing a Mamdani win.”
What Happens Next?
Voting will take place on Tuesday. Polls will be open from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., according to the New York City Board of Elections.
