Photo: Caean Couto/Getty Images
As he clears the 100-day mark of his unprecedented mayoralty, just how popular is Zohran Mamdani?
New polls from Marist College and Emerson College offer a window into the support the 34-year-old socialist enjoys as well as enough fodder for his detractors. Marist found that 48 percent of New Yorkers approved of Mamdani’s job performance, while 30 percent disapproved. (Twenty-three percent were unsure.) Fifty-six percent of New Yorkers said things were moving in the right direction, compared with 43 percent who said they were moving in the wrong direction, a huge jump from October when Eric Adams was mayor: Only 31 percent were optimistic about the city at that point.
Mamdani’s favorability rating in the survey was higher, clocking in at 55 percent. Thirty-three percent of respondents, meanwhile, said they had a somewhat unfavorable or very unfavorable view of the new mayor.
Emerson’s approval numbers weren’t dramatically different. Mamdani had a 43-27 split, with a plurality approving of his job performance. Asking whether the city was on the “right or wrong” track, Emerson did find more negativity — 59 percent for “wrong” and 41 percent for “right.”
As Mamdani critics like the New York Post gleefully pointed out, the Marist job-approval numbers are weaker than Eric Adams’s at around this point in his first and only term. Adams enjoyed a job-approval rating of 61 percent, suggesting that Mamdani may have more of a popularity ceiling than Adams, who became, in the final years of his scandal-scarred mayoralty, the most disliked New York mayor of the modern era. In theory, a lower top-line for Mamdani makes him more vulnerable.
Undoubtedly, the young mayor is polarizing. In an incredibly bitter and expensive general election against Andrew Cuomo, he barely secured 50 percent of the vote. He’s the first Muslim mayor, the first South Asian mayor, and the first to explicitly call himself a socialist. In the conservative pockets of the city, Staten Island especially, he is already reviled. While the Marist poll found Mamdani posting strong approval ratings in four out of the five boroughs, on Staten Island, which is heavily Republican and supported Donald Trump in all three presidential elections, Mamdani’s job-approval split was a dismal 33-60 percent. Given how the borough viewed past Democratic mayors, Bill de Blasio especially, it is difficult to see those numbers ever improving very much. No matter how successful Mamdani appears, Republicans will want little to do with him.
Comparing him to Adams isn’t so straightforward because the two men were elected under very different circumstances. Adams triumphed in a very competitive primary but pro forma general election, beating back an underfunded Curtis Sliwa. He took relatively little heat in either of those races; progressive Democrats trained much of their fire on Andrew Yang, who was the front-runner for several months, while conservatives did little to resist a Democratic nominee who was an ex–police captain punching to his left. Since Adams was already close to real-estate and business elites, there were no anti-Adams super PACs and hardly any significant spending against him. The New York Post, typically committed to bludgeoning any Democrat of prominence, was deeply supportive. Adams entered City Hall four years ago with only a few light chinks in his political armor.
By contrast, Mamdani’s ascent was brutal. In the primary and general election, anti-Mamdani, pro-Cuomo super PACs unleashed tens of millions of dollars against him. He was pilloried — on television, on the radio, online, and in mailboxes — for his views on policing and the Middle East. A radio host even said he’d celebrate if another 9/11 happened. At the same time, he became inordinately famous, more so than any other major party nominee for mayor in living memory. His life and political record were scrutinized relentlessly. Every bit of opposition research was unleashed. He became, in every sense, a known commodity.
To be standing with a positive approval rating on day 100 after all that is no small feat. Mamdani’s numbers are comparable to Bill de Blasio’s popularity levels in 2014 and may be more indicative of where the socialist mayor might hover for a while, barring scandal or an unforeseen crisis. But unlike de Blasio or Adams, Mamdani has a fervent, young base that is unlikely to abandon him anytime soon. Some of it might not even fully register in the polls. In that sense, Mamdani’s standing might be more akin to that of Donald Trump. Even at his peak, the president could never manage an approval rating much beyond 50 percent, but he has remained potent for years because the MAGA wing of the Republican Party never left him. And Mamdani’s command of social media might allow him to combat what is, for most mayors, an inevitable slide from the honeymoon period.
Whether his support holds is anyone’s guess. More attacks are probably on the horizon, with at least one major business group planning a $1 million ad buy and another with Cuomo links formulating a new PAC. As long as he’s mayor, Mamdani won’t be able to rest easy.
