As the 2026 election cycle gets underway, advisers to a new crop of candidates are drawing lessons from Zohran Mamdani on how to activate young voters and potentially change the electorate.
A Gothamist analysis of turnout data shows voters between ages 30 and 39 made up the largest share of a record-setting 2 million voters. Turnout among 18- to 29-year-old voters nearly tripled compared to four years ago, the largest increase of any age group.
Mamdani has said he persuaded those groups by not patronizing them. But now advisers are wrestling with whether Mamdani’s success getting young people to the polls represents a paradigm shift or a moment that can’t be recreated.
“I don’t think this is a Mamdani-specific moment,” said Alyssa Cass, a Democratic strategist and partner at Slingshot Strategies.
"I think what you're seeing in New York City is the emergence of what I like to call the 'Precarity Coalition,'" Cass said. “If you are under 40 here in New York City, it's not working for you anymore.”
Cass said young voters are facing daily challenges that make the city sometimes feel unworkable, including the cost of living and childcare. She is currently advising Alex Bores, a state assemblymember representing Manhattan’s East Side who is one of the nearly dozen candidates vying for U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler’s congressional seat.
“Increasingly, the idea of having a good life is out of reach, and that is for people who are poor, working class, middle class and even upper middle class,” she said.
Other experts say drawing conclusions about local, state legislative or congressional district battles from a citywide race is risky.
“I do think that people need to take a beat because a district race is very different than a mayoral,” said Lupe Todd-Medina, a Democratic political consultant at Effective Media Strategies and the former spokesperson for City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams’ mayoral campaign.
Still, the response to Mamdani’s affordability message and the spike in turnout among younger voters, Cass says, is reconstituting the city’s electorate and should change how candidates campaign going forward.
Traditionally in New York City, candidates often begin their outreach by appealing to insiders, activating Democratic political clubs and interest groups. “I don’t think that does that job anymore,” Cass said.
She said candidates need to meet voters where they are, in person or online, with a consistent message that taps into voters' gut feelings about life in the city.
But Todd-Medina noted that the candidates and their ability to appeal to voters vary at the local level.
She considered Councilmember Chi Ossé's potential Democratic primary bid against Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who represents the 8th Congressional District in Brooklyn. Ossé's Council district overlaps with a portion of Jeffries' congressional district.
“Ossé represents a sliver of the 8th Congressional District. So maybe he plays better in brownstone Brooklyn,” said Todd-Medina, citing a left-leaning portion of the district. “But how is he going to play in Seagate? How does he play in Coney Island?” she added, referring to more conservative neighborhoods.
Todd-Medina is currently advising Marlon Rice, who is challenging state Sen. Jabari Brisport, a democratic socialist.
She credited Mamdani for running a hopeful campaign that expanded the electorate. Mamdani, she said, effectively contrasted with what she described as Andrew Cuomo’s “spastic reign of terror” that painted a grim picture of New York City that did not align with most New Yorkers’ day-to-day lives.
But she was reluctant to say the shifts in the electorate were a sign of permanent changes.
“Mamdani might just be the outlier case,” said Todd-Medina. “We don’t know yet because we’re about to start the next electoral cycle.”
