Broad Mamdani support KO’d Cuomo’s anchors

Orthodox Jewish voters backed former New York governor Andrew Cuomo by a staggering 8-to-1 margin, but that wasn’t enough to stop anti-Israel Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani from pulling off a decisive win in the Democratic primary for New York City mayor, according to political analyst Henry Olsen.

“What’s pretty clear is that Mamdani put together a very wide-ranging ethnic and class coalition, winning votes in Hispanic areas, winning votes in Asian areas, winning votes in moderate to high income areas in Manhattan and in Brooklyn,” said Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. “It was an across-the-board win.”

Cuomo’s inability to expand beyond an Orthodox base cost him the race, Olsen said.

Olsen noted that non-Orthodox Jewish communities split their votes among several candidates.

“If you look at certain areas, like the Upper East Side, the closer you got to Central Park, the better Cuomo performed,” he said. “But on the Upper West Side, it was more of a three-way split between Lander, Mamdani and Cuomo.”

Mamdani’s anti-Israel rhetoric, including declining to denounce the expression “globalize the intifada,” did not repel secular and Reform Jewish voters, according to Olsen.

“I think anyone who wants to win this campaign against Madani has to ask why it is that people who are secular or Reform Jews were not moved by this, whereas clearly the Orthodox were,” he said.

“Mamdani’s challenge is going to be convincing voters outside of the Democratic primary activist base to support him,” Olsen said. “If the general election becomes a one-on-one matchup, voters who disliked Cuomo but also aren’t fully comfortable with Mamdani could be up for grabs.”

“If his opponents manage to consolidate around a single candidate in November, Mamdani will need to run a different kind of campaign to win them over,” he said.

Whoever aims to defeat Mamdani “has to take dissident Democrats and combine them with Republicans and independents,” he said.