Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani was on to something when he praised the young voters and “aunties” who fueled his victory on election night.
A Gothamist analysis found voters under 40 increased their turnout rate more than any other age group compared to four years ago. Many of those voters, the analysis found, did not go to the polls alone. Turnout data shows there were more than 380,000 households that turned out to vote, 64% of which were in Assembly districts Mamdani won.
To identify these households, Gothamist analyzed voter turnout data to find voters who shared the same residential addresses when they registered. Within those addresses, we isolated the ones that had up to five residents, and only included addresses that had either apartment numbers or common last names among the voters who registered under that address.
That includes the home of Japneet Singh, 30, who was one of the mayor-elect’s early supporters. Singh ran for City Council this year, losing a primary in the same Southeast Queens district currently represented by City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams. He also co-founded South Asians for Mamdani, a group of volunteers who knocked on doors in South Ozone Park, Richmond Hill, Jamaica and other neighborhoods with large numbers of South Asian voters.
Zohran Mamdani thanked aunties and uncles for helping fuel his election victory.
But the first voter Singh needed to persuade was his father, Paramjit Multani, 65, an Indian American who came to the United States in the 1980s.
“ I was a supporter of Cuomo at first because of his fame, his reputation,” Multani said. But his son convinced him to attend one campaign event with Mamdani.
Singh finally persuaded his father after telling him about Mamdani's hunger strike in 2021. The then-assemblymember joined demonstrators demanding help for taxi drivers being crushed by debt from predatory lenders. His dad drives for Uber part time.
“ When I had told him it's the same guy that stood with our uncle and so many other people that drive cabs that my father knows,” said Singh, “He's like, ‘No way, that's the guy?’”
Younger generations of voters pushed their elders to back Mamdani in other parts of the city, as well.
In Tribeca, Meredith Kane, 70, said she first heard of Mamdani from her daughter, Alexandra Tell, 34, at the family’s Passover seder. They were discussing Israel’s war in Gaza. One of Tell’s friends had gone to Bronx Science High School with the candidate and she had encountered him at a pro-Palestinian protest outside of Sen. Chuck Schumer’s home in Brooklyn in 2023, where Mamdani was arrested.
“ Watching what Israel had been inflicting on Gaza had been really a painful thing in our community,” said Tell. “So seeing a candidate who embodied a lot of those same important values I was raised with, and believing in equal rights for everybody, I was really excited about Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign.”
Meredith Kane said she voted for Mamdani after seeing how he'd gotten her daughter, Alexandra Tell, engaged in politics.
Her mother shared her views on Israel’s conduct in the war. But she was initially not excited about Mamdani. As a retired real estate attorney, she was deeply skeptical of his housing platform. She opposes freezing the rent and believes that it would cause housing to deteriorate over the years. She thought he lacked experience and ranked him fifth on her ballot in the primary.
But she kept an open mind when he became the Democratic nominee. She saw Mamdani's outreach to different constituencies across the city, citing his meeting with the New York City Partnership and Jewish organizations, including her own synagogue, Lab/Shul in Lower Manhattan.
“ I was really persuaded when Alex told me that she had gone door-to-door campaigning in Bed-Stuy for Mamdani,” said Kane. As someone who worked in the Koch administration, Kane said she firmly believes more young people need to get involved with their city.
“I thought, this is the best. This is what I want. I want young people to be involved in this way, and I was so inspired by that act that I really looked twice at him,” Kane said. She voted for him in the general election.
In other parts of the city, some families made electing Mamdani a shared goal, spending nights and weekends convincing their neighbors.
In Kingsbridge Heights in the Bronx, where portions of the neighborhood went for Andrew Cuomo in the primary, Jack Marth, 61, and his son, Sam, made it their mission to ensure Mamdani won the general election. The family has always been politically active, helping campaign for their local state Sen. Gustavo Rivera, who replaced Pedro Espada, the former state Senate majority leader convicted of corruption charges in 2012.
Jack and Sam Marth both support Mamdani and advocated for the candidate in their Kingsbridge neighborhood.
Now that Mamdani’s won, the father and son said they are focused on helping the mayor-elect achieve his agenda.
“ In larger, smaller ways, we can continue to help,” said Sam Marth, 31.
“ It's gonna take a movement that needs to be behind him. So we need to be continually involved in the issues that his campaign stood for,” his father added.
For voters like Japneet Singh and his father Paramjit Multani, the sense that this election was about family extends to many others in the South Asian community.
On election night, Singh says his father got a call from a friend who is also an Uber driver.
“He's Pakistani. He's like, ‘Paramjit congratulations, we won!’” Singh said.
“It was amazing,” Multani added. “A South Asian mayor. Still, it's unbelievable, you know? And, against Cuomo.”
Singh said the whole election felt personal. “It really feels like a family member has won,” he said, “and will be going to Gracie Mansion.”
