Hispanic vote backed Mamdani in New York City mayoral Democratic primary

New York.- The Hispanic vote backed the left-wing candidate Zohran Mamdani – the virtual winner of the Democratic Party primaries for the Mayor of New York - in Tuesday's elections and surprisingly unseated the favorite in all the forecasts, the former governor Andrew Cuomo. According to a New York Times poll, 47.4% of New Yorkers living in predominantly Hispanic areas chose Mamdani as their first choice at the polls, a 33-year-old assemblyman with a short political career. While 41.5% of that same population voted for Cuomo, the former state governor who was forced to resign from that position in 2021 after several sexual harassment scandals. Latinos represent 28.3% of the population of New York City, according to the 2020 Census.

Mamdani Secures the Hispanic Vote in New York

The NYT poll focuses on votes where the Hispanic population predominates, such as The Bronx - where Latinos are 55% of the population - and Queens - where Hispanics represent 33%, for example. In his campaign, Mamdani bet on messages in Spanish and did not hesitate to make spots for social networks of several minutes in Spanish, in which, without having a perfect pronunciation or syntax, he managed to make his main ideas known with a fresh and casual air.

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Their proposals have also prioritized issues that resonate with Latino communities: protection of low-cost rentals, free transportation, public nurseries, and lowering food prices. Furthermore, Mamdani was backed by a heavyweight for the Latino community, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who represents a district with a 52.4% Hispanic population that includes the east side of the Bronx and part of north-central Queens. Although Mamdani has not achieved the 50% that would give him the election resolved according to the rules of the primaries, Cuomo seems to have thrown in the towel, but did not rule out running for the November elections as an independent, just like the current mayor of the Big Apple, Eric Adams, will do.