A long talk with political analyst Michael Lange about what we’ve learned from the massive New York City early vote, the final phase of the campaign, and why he’s as confident as ever about Mamdani claiming a big victory.
For months, Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani, independent candidate Andrew Cuomo, and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa have crossed the five boroughs to make their case to the voters on why they should be next to lead City Hall. More than 735,000 New Yorkers cast ballots during the early voting period that ended Sunday, and each campaign seems to see that record-setting turnout as a boon to its chances. Since the primary, political researcher and strategist Michael Lange has become one of the most prominent voices analyzing the race, known for his district-by-district breakdown of the city’s electorate and his prescient forecast that Mamdani would ultimately be victorious in June. With Lange set to release his Election Day prediction Monday morning, I spoke with him about his views on the early-voting turnout, whether polling has improved in the race since the primary, and who has the momentum heading into Tuesday.
Record numbers of New Yorkers cast their ballots in early voting across the city. What are your impressions of the data so far?
I think Cuomo got a not-insignificant bump in the first couple days from older, wealthier voters in Manhattan, many of whom I guess you would describe as very Zionist and who do not like Mamdani’s position on Israel. There were many people I respect who normally never sound the alarm but were genuinely a little spooked by some of that. But Cuomo was never getting the numbers in other parts of the city that he would need to really make this super-close or to have Mamdani on upset alert.
But some of the electorate being a little older, that’s of course a consequence of the general election, too. Sliwa’s voters, however many there are, they’re almost all over 55. The Republican off-year electorate in New York City is super-old. So that also contributed to it. But I never saw a reason for Mamdani to be concerned, really. I thought the only thing that might have been in jeopardy was him hitting 50 percent. I see that as kind of the biggest question of the next couple days, rather than just a win-loss thing.
There’s always the most early voting kind of towards the end. Amongst that bump, it was very young. The Halloween stickers on Friday certainly paid off. It was the youngest day. Getting over 700,000 early votes puts us well in that 1.8, 1.9 million range for the total come Election Day. I think it further contextualizes that there was that little Cuomo flurry at the very beginning, in terms of a lot of his older supporters coming out. But then as time progressed, it got younger and younger and younger and the curve kind of leveled out and resembled more of the primary. And I think I’ve seen more and more evidence that Mamdani should be confident going into Tuesday, not only about winning, but about the margin of victory.
How does this early-voting electorate compare with early voters in the primary? Are new groups being motivated?
We saw very, very high turnout in the first few days of early voting from the Upper East Side and Upper West Side of Manhattan, that Sutton Place, Midtown East area. All of which were some of Cuomo’s few bright spots in Manhattan during the primary. Then if you compare that with the Democratic primary during early voting, the vote was almost exclusively coming from areas Mamdani would win besides the Upper East Side, Upper West Side. Early voting just in general is kind of skewed toward each coalition’s white voters, right? They’re more likely to have a car in the outer-boroughs to go to the polling site, or they’re a higher percentage of the demographics in some of these denser neighborhoods where people can walk to vote. So the distribution of the vote was a little more spread out than what we’re seeing in the general election so far. This general-election electorate, it’s very young compared with other general elections. It’s just not quite as young as in the primary.
What do we know, if anything, about these older early voters?
All we really know is which districts and neighborhoods they’re coming from. Right now, the biggest concentrations of support are, again, in those Central Park–adjacent neighborhoods in Manhattan, which I expect right now lean Cuomo. Then you have those neighborhoods adjacent to Prospect Park in Brooklyn; where Central Park leans Cuomo, the crew around Prospect Park is overwhelmingly Mamdani. And then you have Staten Island. The southern parts have had some pretty solid turnout that leans toward Sliwa and, to a lesser extent, Cuomo. Staten Island’s the most Italian county in the country.
The thing about Cuomo, though, is that he has this support from very affluent voters but he’s been hemorrhaging support from all the working-class parts of his coalition. I think he can win the Upper East Side again or narrowly win the Upper West Side perhaps. But he’s going to lose almost everywhere else. The people who vote on Election Day in New York City are generally more working class and more diverse, and a few more of them are Republicans in the general election. In the primary, there was a worry in the Mamdani campaign, like, Oh yeah, we win early voting, but are we just going to be blitzed on Election Day when all these places in “Cuomo Country” can really start voting? But they weren’t.
