NYC Primary Election

As many people likely know, Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist, recently defeated former New York governor Andrew Cuomo in the primary elections for New York City mayor, giving him a solid chance of winning mayorship for the biggest city in the United States. The gendered aspect of the voting hasn’t received that much attention, so I’d like to highlight it here. (Although I suspect most here will not find it to be a surprise.)

The Data

I’ll be looking at two different polls that were conducted before the primary, from Emerson College and Data For Progress. Both show similar results in terms of gender. The Emerson College poll finds that "Men support Mamdani 56% to 44%, while women lean toward Cuomo 52% to 48%."

Looking at the Data For Progress poll, men approve of Zohran Mamdani +4 more than women, and disprove of Cuomo -15 more compared to women. (Although it is worth noting that opinion on Cuomo is low all around.) Similarly, Brad Lander, who cross-endorsed Mamdani and was third in ranked choice voting, has men approving of him +5 more than women do.

This same gap of around 5 more approval holds true for both Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which the Data For Progress poll also measured. Sanders is +5 higher with men, and AOC is +6 higher with men.

I will caution that some of the gap might be due to the life expectancy difference that means that women as a group have proportionally more old voters, who tend to prefer more centrist candidates. The gender gap in voting is more consistent than the age based gaps though, so it likely isn’t the whole story. For example, under 45 is a +45 difference compared to over 45 voters for Mamdani, but for Lander it is only +7.

Reflection

While men’s issues specifically were not highlighted, working class politics was, and is probably what leads to this higher male support. The messaging style probably also played a role, which Mamdani describes in one interview(at 16:39) as “ultimately, what we wanted to do from the very beginning of this race, was change our political instinct from lecturing to listening.” He reached out to working class New Yorkers who previously voted for Trump, and stated that “New Yorkers deserve a mayor that they can see, they can hear, that they can even yell at.” All of this vastly differs from the establishment democratic strategy of shaming men into voting for them.

While the gendered aspect of support hasn’t garnered much attention, I did find a Jacobin article that seems to be making baby steps here, saying that “mainstream Democrats remain mired in misandry… Sanders enjoyed so much support among young men that ‘Bernie Bro’ became a term of derision.” They also note the same Data For Progress poll I’ve highlighted here showing that “Bernie Sanders, AOC, and Zohran Mamdani all enjoyed ‘very favorable’ impressions among men, actually more than among women.”

They actually make the point again in a retrospective article after Mamdani won the primary. Bernie Sanders also noted in an interview here that Mamdani “got young people excited. He got young men excited.” So at least in some places, this is getting notice.

Not about the gender voting gap, but this article on Mahmoud Khalil and Zohran Mamdani notes that “Muslim and Arab men are often portrayed... as inherently violent savages” and “Turn on cable news this week and you’ll hear plenty of talk about how Arab women are in so much danger from Arab men that their country must be bombed in order to liberate them.” Both of which are good observations on how racialized men are talked about. I also appreciate that the article is highlighting good things about men. (It helps push back against gamma bias.)

Hopefully this election might push the democratic party towards a less misandric direction. Even a little bit of change would help in making men and boy’s issues more acceptable to talk about. All the resistance by the establishment democrats make it feel unlikely, but we will see.