Analysis: Do Democrats have a Zohran Mamdani problem?

CNN

6 hours ago

FacebookTweetLink Ever since Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic primary for New York City mayor two months ago, Republicans have been licking their chops, and prominent Democrats have been squirming.
The GOP sees this as an opportunity to tie the broader Democratic Party to a self-described socialist with many far-left policies who is well poised to become mayor of the nation's largest city. And the reaction from some Democrats – many high-profile ones have declined to endorse him – suggests they see potential peril here.
The issue is coming to a head. Polls reinforce Mamdani is a strong favorite to become mayor. Congressional Republicans are running ads invoking him as they try to hold onto the US House next year. And The New York Times reports he's heard from former President Barack Obama, perhaps signaling a thaw with the Democratic establishment. Now Mamdani is getting the Time magazine cover treatment.
So, it's a good time to ask: How much of a liability could he be for Democrats?
It's still too early to say. Mamdani remains very new on the national and even the local stage, and much will depend on how he runs his campaign and ultimately, if he wins in November, how he governs. There have been some signs of attempted moderation.
But we do have some early clues about how he could affect his party.
For starters, Mamdani is clearly not popular outside of New York City.
A Siena College poll this week showed statewide New York voters disliked him 37%-28% – and that's in a left-leaning state.
A recent Yahoo News-YouGov poll, meanwhile, showed a relatively similar verdict among Americans nationwide: 31%-22% negative.
While those aren't good numbers, they don't exactly suggest he's a pariah who could be used effectively as a bogeyman on the national stage – at least yet. In the national survey, 46% didn't even have an opinion of the Democratic mayoral nominee, underscoring the room that exists for him to define himself — or be defined by others. (Even in New York, 34% of voters didn't have an opinion about him.)
It's relatively normal for politicians to be somewhat underwater these days. Mamdani's numbers in New York state were better than those of his top two opponents, New York Mayor Eric Adams and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, for example. And his national numbers are about as negative as President Donald Trump's, if you adjust for name recognition.
But the polls also reinforce how Mamdani could alienate some key voters. Both surveys show he's popular with young voters, but he gets much less popular as voters get older. The New York poll showed voters 55 and older dislike him 47%-18%. The national poll shows voters 45 and older dislike him about 2-to-1.
From there, it's a question of whether his ideas could alienate lots of voters – as people become familiar with them and particularly if he actually pursues some of the more far-left ones. Trump and others have painted Mamdani as not just a socialist, but also as a communist.
The Yahoo poll suggested that some of Mamdani's more socialistic proposals are actually quite popular. For instance, Americans liked the idea of freezing rent for low-income tenants, 60%-22%. They liked making public buses free, 46%-36%. They even liked Mamdani's (much-maligned on the right) idea of government-owned grocery stores, 51%-31%.
Whether those policies would work in practice is a huge variable, but voters actually seem to like them in theory. And to the extent Mamdani focuses on kitchen-table issues, it's less likely some of these stances would be a problem for Democrats.
But then we get into the other stuff. Mamdani has a problematic paper trail on some hot-button issues that Republicans have been gleeful to highlight.
Late in the primary, he refused to condemn the phrase 'globalize the intifada,' leading some Democrats who view it as a call to arms against Jewish people to strongly rebuke him. He's since signaled he would discourage the phrase.
Mamdani has also in the past supported the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
But polls suggest relatively few Americans are familiar with these subjects. A 2022 Pew Research Center poll, for instance, showed 84% of Americans said they'd heard 'not much' or 'nothing at all' about the BDS movement.
The polls also suggest Americans writ large are adopting an increasingly skeptical posture toward Israel and its prosecution of the war against Hamas in Gaza. That doesn't mean people will be okay with 'globalize the intifada' or Mamdani's comments about the phrase, but it suggests his criticisms of Israel might be less of an issue than they once could have been.
Mamdani was also once an outspoken supporter of the Defund the Police movement, which was prominent among some corners of the left amid racial justice protests years ago. He called the NYPD 'racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety' and once mocked an image of a crying police officer.
Those comments could be a problem for his party, given it's been relatively rare to see a high-profile Democrat who espoused defunding the police. Polling from 2021 showed as much as 70% of Americans opposed that movement.
But Mamdani's now sought to distance himself from those past comments and said he doesn't support defunding the police anymore.
And finally is the s-word: socialist. Americans' views on socialism have improved somewhat in recent years, owing in large part to the rise of self-described 'democratic socialist' Bernie Sanders, the Independent Vermont senator.
But socialism as a whole has remained an unpopular ideology. Gallup polling in 2021 showed Americans viewed it unfavorably, 59%-38%. A Pew poll showed they opposed socialism by a similar margin, 60%-36%. And a Fox News poll in 2022 showed voters said that the country moving toward socialism would be a bad thing, 60%-32%.
But just because they don't like socialism doesn't mean they're not open to candidates who use that label.
Sanders, for one, remains popular even as he's embraced the 'democratic socialist' label. A Gallup poll last month showed he actually had the best numbers of 10 US political figures tested.
And in second place? Another self-described democratic socialist, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. She, like Sanders, beat out a series of Trump administration figures tested by Gallup.
All of which could suggest Mamdani might not be the pariah Republicans envision him as — depending on how he adjusts to his newfound prominence. Republicans certainly have material to work with here, but time will tell.