New York City Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani will take office on 1 January, after a win that only the bookies and his enthusiastic campaign coalition anticipated. He will be the youngest mayor of the NY City in more than 100 years, and the first Muslim and first South Asian mayor. His election campaign was energetic and vibrant, his promise ‘to build a new kind of politics’.
Mamdani describes himself as a democratic socialist. He is variously tagged as a progressive or a left-wing populist. On the eve of voting, President Donald Trump threatened to withdraw federal funding for New York City if Mamdani was elected.
Trump failed to influence the result Turn out was up by 16.5 points. Mamdani won with an overall majority of 50.39%, almost 10% ahead of his nearest rival.
Mamdani campaigned on a platform of social equity and environmental justice, including:
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- universal childcare
- free bus travel
- rent controls and the construction of social housing, and
- a $30 minimum wage by 2030.
He also spoke out against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and called for tax increases on corporations and dollar millionaires.
The UK Labour Party would benefit from a serious study of Zohran Mamdani’s victory which has been described as ‘one of the great political upsets in modern American history’.
This Democracy Now! video considers Mamdani in his own words and through the lens of the grassroots coalition that helped bring him to office. It begins in 2021 when he appeared on Democracy Now! for the first time in the autumn of 2021, taking part in a hunger strike to demand debt relief for New York taxi drivers.
This video, The Historic Rise of Zohran Mamdani: Democracy Now! Coverage from 2021 Hunger Strike to Election Night, first appeared on Democracy Now! Daily Show of 28 November 2025, and is licensed for use under a Creative Commons.