Former governor Andrew Cuomo won the votes of New Yorkers without bachelor’s or advanced degrees, exit polls show
New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani (D.) credited immigrant and working class New Yorkers with his win Tuesday night, but a closer look at exit polls shows it was the city’s over-educated elite that carried the democratic socialist to victory—and that New Yorkers without college degrees preferred former governor Andrew Cuomo (D.).
“Thank you to those so often forgotten by the politics of our city who made this movement their own,” Mamdani declared during his victory speech. “I speak of Yemeni bodega owners and Mexican abuelas, Senegalese taxi drivers and Uzbek nurses, Trinidadian line cooks and Ethiopian aunties.”
The numbers do not bear out that sentiment. Cuomo—who finished with 41.3 percent of the vote when the Associated Press called the race—won 48 percent of voters without a high school degree to Mamdani’s 40 percent. Voters whose education ended with a high school diploma backed Cuomo over Mamdani to the tune of 46 percent to 40 percent, while 47 percent of those with “some college” voted for Cuomo compared with 41 percent who backed Mamdani.
Mamdani’s strength with the city’s elite was enough to put him over the edge, though. The Ugandan-born New York state assemblyman won 57 percent of voters with at least a bachelor’s degree, while Cuomo pulled in only 38 percent.
Mamdani has made attacking New York’s wealthy a pillar of his political identity, but his rhetoric has not stopped him from palling around with some of the city’s richest. Just after Mamdani secured his victory, Alex Soros, son of George and a left-wing activist billionaire himself, posted a photo with the mayor-elect on his Instagram.
“So proud to be a New Yorker!” Soros wrote in the caption. “The American dream continues!”
The prominent progressive family’s network handsomely financed Mamdani’s campaign, funneling tens of millions of dollars into groups backing the city’s next mayor.
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