Zohran Mamdani’s stunning triumph over Andrew Cuomo in the New York Mayoral Democratic primary has placed him on ‘the precipice’ of mayoralty in some experts' views, wrong footing pollsters and traditional media alike. This was a victory for a targeted and direct approach from a candidate who knew his audience and exactly how to get to them.

As noted by the Observer, four months ago, Cuomo was 23 points ahead of his rivals, whilst Mamdani was on 1%. So how did Mamdani make up the difference? Was it such a shock or were the signs there if you knew where to look?

One explanation is that not enough weight was given to platforms, such as podcasts, livestreams and influencers that are given more credence by voters than some of the traditionally critical media outlets. Mamdani was the only one generating traction online, according to social listening platform Talkwalker, Mamdani received over double the mentions online in the run up to the primary compared to Cuomo (1.2m vs 517k), and what is striking is the relative lack of negative terms associated with Mamdani in these posts. The success of his campaign means that many of his tactics will likely be embraced as part of the Democratic playbook for the next few years, and where the US goes, the UK tends to belatedly follow.

Mamdani’s campaign was a slick mobile-and video-first operation, based on a simple premise that he would work to fight the cost of living, using simple messaging that is highly localised to make it relevant to the electorate. See his video with the New York halal chicken vans to illustrate how he would implement legislation to cut red tape for businesses. The social content was personable, down to earth and presented a man ready to listen; with soft filters, skilful editing and a purpose; his walk across New York talking to voters provided fertile ground for content creation, illustrating the groundswell of support he received.

The success of this video-based campaign illustrates the value of video in creating your own platform to disseminate messaging, allowing you to talk directly to your audience without a middleman of a journalist or a reporter, more on that here. It is also clear that being comfortable on camera is a non-negotiable in the political sphere – no longer can a politician rely on media coverage; they need to face the electorate head on.

Being relatable and identifying audiences to be mobilised was the MO of the campaign, and this meant adapting strategies for different audiences. His videos were filmed all around New York and he finetuned his messaging to local communities – he worked to reach Spanish, Mandarin and Bengali speaking voters, embracing the multiculturalism of the city in his campaign. Obviously, it is nigh on impossible to be that localised on a national-level campaign, but there are things to take from it. For one, it has been suggested that he shaped his campaign around this video, recorded just after the Presidential Election, where he listened to what New Yorkers’ priorities are, and managed his key pledges accordingly.

The Mamdani campaign tapped into communication streams beyond the traditional media sources, doing podcasts, social media Q&As with millions of followers and collaborating with public figures such as Emily Ratajkowski. Enlisting support from popular Twitch streamer Hasan Piker also paid dividends, generating huge levels of engagements by audiences that do not regularly read the mainstream news, as evidenced by the recent Reuters Institute report. Through embracing new media and meeting prospective voters in the spaces that they inhabit, Mamdani could prove that he was one of them.

By contrast, the Cuomo campaign was starkly static and analogue, neither capturing the imagination nor generating conversations, indeed Talkwalker reports that over 10% of Cuomo’s social media mentions included either “corruption” or “scandal”. You are also slightly hamstrung when your opponent can reel off a list like this without riposte, it could fairly be said that he is stymied by a bit of an image problem. This clip is revealing about the social media game; Mamdani presents himself as full of righteous anger, but immediately regains composure at the end of his diatribe, an example of soundbite hunting. The shortform social video has completely shifted the political campaign strategy. Speeches are now written for social clips, rather than a cohesive message, who ‘won’ a debate is judged off the back of a thirty second clip posted on socials. So, an example of Mamdani cleverly creating his own viral moment whilst hammering his opponent, generating huge traction and over one million views on just this video.

So, is this an anomaly? Well, the answer is yes, and yet also no. New York is a pretty unique political environment, and the only thing close to it in the UK is the London mayoral race, you wouldn’t see such clamour for other mayoral elections. However, it is indicative of the understandable difficulty that polling is facing in developing their methodologies to adjust to the digital age. Platforms are always unsurprisingly ahead of the pollsters, and we can always expect a tech lag as they look to catch up, meaning that the capture of non-habitual voters was not accurately predicted ahead of this election. Groundswells of support expressed on platforms such as Twitch and podcasts are not easily measurable, and so instead are ignored, and therefore intentions are judged in a vacuum rather than with the full facts.

Zohran Mamdani is a canny political operator who works to understand his audience and the key messages and tactics that will resonate with them. He used this to great effect during his campaign, tailoring his messaging and presenting himself as a man of the people. Whilst it is unlikely that many politicians will be able to pull off similar campaigns with the same level of charisma and success, expect to see more mimicking his campaigning in the next few years.

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