2025 New York City mayoral election

2025 New York City mayoral election

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← 2021 November 4, 2025 2029 →
Registered	5,103,941[1]
Turnout	2,218,647[2] 43.47% (20.08 pp)
File:Zohran Mamdani 05.25.25 (rotated cropped).jpg File:Governor Andrew Cuomo in 2021 (cropped).jpg File:Curtis Sliwa 23 Oct 2025 - 1 (cropped).jpg Party Democratic Independent[a] Republican[b] Alliance Working Families Popular vote 1,114,184 906,614 153,749 Percentage 50.78% 41.32% 7.01%
File:2025 Borough Map Mayor's Race NYC.svg Borough results File:2025 New York City Mayor's race (congressional district).svg Congressional district results File:2025 NYC Mayor by AD.svg State Assembly district results File:2025 NYC Mayor race by city council district.svg City Council district results Center Precinct results Mamdani:      30–40%      40–50%      50–60%      60–70%      70–80%      80–90%      >90% Cuomo:      30–40%      40–50%      50–60%      60–70%      70–80%      80–90%      >90% Sliwa:      >90% Tie:      40–50%      50%      No votes
Mayor before election Eric Adams Democratic Elected Mayor Zohran Mamdani Democratic

2025 New York City mayoral election was held on November 4, 2025, to choose the mayor of New York City for the 2026–2030 term. Democratic state assemblyman Zohran Mamdani defeated former Democratic governor Andrew Cuomo, who ran as an independent, and Republican activist Curtis Sliwa, winning a majority of the vote and securing more than 1.1 million ballots citywide according to unofficial results reported by national and local outlets that called the race on election night and in its immediate aftermath.^[4][5][6]

Turnout surpassed two million voters and was widely described as the highest participation in a New York City mayoral election since 1969, with analysts noting that more than 2.2 million ballots were cast out of roughly 5.1 million registered voters, far above recent municipal contests and reflecting unusual public engagement in a local race.^[6][7][8] Post-election analysis by academic researchers indicated that youth participation was particularly strong for a municipal contest, with one study estimating that roughly 28 percent of New Yorkers aged 18 to 29 voted in the mayoral race, a level substantially higher than typical city elections and a factor credited with strengthening Mamdani's position.^[9][10][8]

Mamdani's victory was widely described as historic because he is set to become New York City's first Muslim mayor, its first mayor of South Asian origin, and its youngest mayor in more than a century, while also representing a self-identified democratic socialist current within the Democratic Party that campaigned on expansive housing, transit, and social-welfare proposals.^[11][12][4] Commentators across the political spectrum framed the result as a significant inflection point in New York City politics, highlighting the contrast between Mamdani's agenda and the record of outgoing mayor Eric Adams as well as the failure of Cuomo's attempted comeback as a self-styled moderate alternative.^[4][13][14]

Background[edit | edit source]

The 2025 election took place against the backdrop of a turbulent single term for Mayor Eric Adams, who had been elected in 2021 on a promise to restore public safety and manage post-pandemic recovery but faced persistent criticism over crime, homelessness, and his administration's handling of an influx of migrants, along with a series of ethics and fundraising controversies.^[13][7][15] Federal investigations into Adams's campaign finances, followed by a 2024 indictment that was later dropped, further weakened his political standing and contributed to speculation that he might lose a primary challenge or choose not to seek renomination.^[13][11][16]

Adams initially entered the 2025 mayoral race and attempted to frame himself as a centrist guardian of public order, but his support in public polling eroded as concerns about governance and ethics mounted, while Mamdani, a younger state legislator identified with the city's progressive wing, gained ground among Democratic primary voters who favored more aggressive action on housing, social services, and climate policy.^[7][17][18] After losing the Democratic primary, Adams briefly continued his bid as a minor-party and independent-line candidate before suspending his campaign in late September, stating that loss of public financing and sustained negative coverage had made it impossible to compete; he ultimately endorsed Cuomo over Mamdani, but the endorsement did not prevent Cuomo from losing both the primary and the general election.^[14][7]

Candidates[edit | edit source]

The general election ballot featured three major candidates. Zohran Mamdani, a state assemblyman from Queens first elected in 2020, ran as the Democratic nominee and also appeared on the Working Families Party line through New York's electoral fusion system. He campaigned on a platform that promised large-scale investment in affordable and public housing, fare-free or low-cost public transit, expanded tenant protections, and a shift in public safety policy toward social services and alternatives to incarceration, while also emphasizing climate policy and immigrant protections.^[4][12][19]

Andrew Cuomo, who served as governor of New York from 2011 until his 2021 resignation amid sexual harassment allegations, sought a political comeback in the 2025 race. After losing the Democratic primary to Mamdani, he continued into the general election on an independent ballot line branded as a pragmatic, pro-business alternative, arguing that his executive experience and relationships in Albany positioned him to manage crime, infrastructure, and budget pressures more effectively than his opponents.^[14][7] Cuomo attracted support from some labor unions, business leaders, and moderate Democrats wary of Mamdani's platform, and he received late endorsements that fueled a modest polling rebound, but he ultimately finished a clear second in the general election.^[14][6][17]

Curtis Sliwa, founder of the Guardian Angels and the Republican nominee in the 2021 mayoral election, again ran as the Republican candidate in 2025. He emphasized a law-and-order message focused on crime, quality-of-life offenses, and opposition to sanctuary city policies, while also campaigning on issues such as animal welfare and opposition to congestion pricing, and he appeared on both the Republican line and a small third-party ballot line that highlighted his animal-rights advocacy.^[20][8][21]

In addition to the three principal contenders, several minor-party and independent candidates qualified for the ballot but received only a small share of the vote citywide, and none played a decisive role in the outcome according to contemporaneous analyzes of the vote distribution.^[5][6][8]

Campaign[edit | edit source]

The campaign highlighted a sharp ideological divide over public safety, homelessness, and housing. Mamdani criticized Adams's encampment clearances and policing-centric strategy and pledged to halt encampment “sweeps,” redirect resources toward permanent housing and mental-health services, and expand tenant protections, while his critics argued that the approach would encourage disorder and strain city finances.^[15][22][23] Cuomo attacked Mamdani's proposals as unrealistic and fiscally irresponsible, calling instead for targeted social programs combined with traditional policing and economic development incentives, and he sought to rally voters worried that a left-leaning administration would drive out businesses and affluent taxpayers, although some post-election reporting found little evidence of an immediate exodus.^[14][24][25]

Foreign policy and identity politics also surfaced as campaign issues, particularly around Adams's late-term executive orders aimed at protecting Israel from boycotts and adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which clashed with Mamdani's prior support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement and his criticism of Israeli government policies. Coverage of the campaign noted that these differences produced intense debate over antisemitism, free expression, and the proper scope of city policy in international matters, and they fueled both opposition to Mamdani and energetic support from progressive and pro-Palestinian constituencies.^[26][11][27]

At the same time, national political dynamics shaped the tone of the race. President Donald Trump openly criticized Mamdani during the campaign and warned that his election would harm New York's relationship with the federal government, while Mamdani positioned himself as a city-level counterweight to Trump's agenda and later met with the president after the election in a widely covered White House visit that both sides described as an attempt to find areas of cooperation on funding and infrastructure despite sharp ideological differences.^[28][11][4]

Polling[edit | edit source]

Public polling throughout 2025 generally showed Mamdani leading the field, sometimes by wide margins, although different surveys varied in the size of his advantage and in how undecided voters and minor-party candidates were treated. A New York Times and Siena College poll released in September reported Mamdani with a commanding lead over Adams, Cuomo, and Sliwa among likely voters, a result that was widely interpreted as evidence of a strong appetite for change and contributed to calls from some Democratic officials for Adams to withdraw and for Cuomo to consolidate centrist opposition.^[17][16][7]

As the general election approached, later polls suggested some tightening of the race. A Quinnipiac University survey at the end of October found Mamdani ahead of Cuomo by roughly ten points among likely voters, with Sliwa a distant third, and emphasized a pronounced generational divide, with younger voters strongly favoring Mamdani while older voters leaned toward Cuomo.^[29][17][9] A Fox News poll and local media round-ups of late October polling similarly reported Mamdani with a double-digit lead but noted that Cuomo had gained some ground following endorsements and increased campaign activity, while Sliwa remained in the single digits.^[20][21][14]

Analysts cautioned that the city's use of ranked-choice voting in the Democratic primary and first-past-the-post rules in the general election complicated direct comparisons across polls, and they highlighted uncertainties about whether Adams's eventual exit and endorsements would shift more votes to Cuomo or to Mamdani. In practice, the final results closely matched the late October polling margins, with Mamdani winning by roughly nine to ten percentage points over Cuomo and Sliwa reinforcing the Republican Party's status as a minor force in citywide contests.^[5][4][6]

Election results[edit | edit source]

The New York City Mayor election results, as reported by NBC News, show that Zohran Mamdani received 1,114,184 votes, Andrew Cuomo received 906,614, and Curtis Sliwa received 153,749, with total turnout of 2,218,647 voters.^[2] These official results aligned with election-night projections reported by national and local media outlets, which noted that the margins closely matched pre-election polling.^[4][5][6] Mamdani not only secured a clear majority but also became the first mayoral candidate since John Lindsay in 1969 to receive more than one million votes in a New York City mayoral election, a symbolic benchmark cited in coverage emphasizing the scale of participation.^[7][11]

Turnout was geographically and demographically uneven. Analyzes of precinct-level results released by local media and academic mapping projects indicated that Cuomo performed strongest in Staten Island, in parts of southern Brooklyn, and in affluent Manhattan neighborhoods such as the Upper East Side, while Mamdani ran up large margins in the Bronx, much of Brooklyn and Queens, and in diverse working-class and immigrant neighborhoods that had strongly supported Democratic candidates in recent national elections.^[8][7][6] Commentators noted that borough patterns broadly tracked the 2024 presidential vote, with many precincts that had backed President Trump shifting toward Cuomo in the mayoral race while precincts that had supported Vice President Kamala Harris strongly backed Mamdani, reinforcing the impression that national partisan and ideological alignments heavily structured local voting behavior.^[8][7][9]

Studies of exit polls and youth participation suggested that voters under 30 and many non-white communities supported Mamdani by wide margins, whereas Cuomo's base was relatively older, whiter, and more concentrated among homeowners and higher-income residents, and Sliwa drew his best results in traditionally Republican areas but did not significantly expand that coalition.^[9][10][8] Turnout remained well below the number of registered voters, leading some critics of the city's political system to argue that the winner lacked a mandate from the entire electorate, but most mainstream coverage treated the election as a decisive outcome within the rules of New York's mayoral system, given the clear margin of victory and the historically large number of ballots cast.^[6][4][11]

Notes[edit | edit source]

See also[edit | edit source]

References[edit | edit source]