Democratic candidate for New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani, delivers remarks while campaigning at the Hanson Place Seventh-Day Adventist Church in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, US, Nov. 1, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ryan Murphy
New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani remains the favorite heading into Election Day on Tuesday, polling indicates, despite the Democratic nominee facing huge vulnerabilities among Jewish voters amid concerns over antisemitism and far-left policies outside the mainstream.
Most polling over the past month of the race has shown Mamdani ahead of his chief rival — former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is running as an independent after losing the Democratic primary earlier this year — by 10 to 18 percentage points, with Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa trailing in third place. One outlier was an Emerson College poll released last week showing Mamdani in the lead by 25 points.
However, a new bombshell survey from AtlasIntel published on Monday showed Cuomo within striking distance, trailing Mamdani by just five points, 44 percent to 39 percent. The survey — which came a day after the same polling outfit had Cuomo trailing Mamdani by six points, indicating an upward trend for the former governor — also found that Cuomo would beat Mamdani 50 percent to 44 percent in a hypothetical two-way race.
Mamdani is currently struggling to win over Jewish New Yorkers, according to several polls, including one from Quinnipiac last week showing only 16 percent of the Jewish vote going to the Democratic nominee compared to 60 percent for Cuomo. A striking 75 percent of Jewish voters said they hold an “unfavorable” opinion of Mamdani, echoing similar findings from other surveys in recent months, such as a Sienna College poll from August.
New York City has the highest Jewish population of any area outside of Israel, giving the Jewish vote in the largest US city significant weight. The lack of support for Mamdani is especially telling given the Jewish community’s typical overwhelming support for Democrats in New York.
Despite his apparent failure to galvanize the Jewish vote ahead of the election, Mamdani has signaled that he will fight on behalf of the city’s Jews if elected mayor.
In a new Jewish Telegraphic Agency interview, Mamdani struck a conciliatory tone, acknowledging Jewish concerns about his candidacy. “I don’t begrudge folks who are skeptical of me,” he said. “I hope to prove that I am someone to build a relationship with, not one to fear.”
The statement marked a notable shift in tone for the outspoken progressive, who has faced criticism for past comments describing Israel as an “apartheid state” and for his refusal to affirm Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.
Mamdani, a democratic socialist aligned with the left flank of the party, has long been an anti-Israel activist who has supported boycott campaigns targeting Israeli-linked institutions and frequently joined rallies condemning Israeli military actions targeting Hamas terrorists in Gaza. While he insists that his positions are aimed at achieving what he calls “equal rights” in Israel, many Jewish groups have accused Mamdani of engaging in antisemitic tropes.
Mamdani sparked outrage over the summer after he repeatedly refused to condemn the slogan “globalize the intifada,” a phrase widely interpreted as a call to harm Jews and Israelis worldwide.
“I fear living in a city, and a nation, where anti-Zionist rhetoric is normalized and contagious,” Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, a prominent Jewish voice at Manhattan’s Central Synagogue, said during Shabbat services on Friday night. “Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has contributed to a mainstreaming of some of the most abhorrent antisemitism.”
She cited Mamdani’s reluctance to label Hamas, which calls for the murder of Jews and destruction of Israel, a terrorist group and his 2023 remark, which surfaced this past week, erroneously saying the New York City Police Department (NYPD) had learned aggressive policing tactics from the Israeli military.
“We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF [Israel Defense Forces],” Mamdani said.
A CNN analysis of his electoral strategy noted that Mamdani’s relationship with Jewish voters “remains fraught.” Polling data suggests that while he performs reasonably well among younger progressive Jews, support among Orthodox and traditional Jewish blocs, particularly in Brooklyn and Queens, remains minimal.
Jewish voters will likely only harden their opposition amid reports that Jeremy Corbyn, the former leader of the UK Labour Party who has long been accused of antisemitism, was working the phones on Sunday for Mamdani at a Democratic Socialists of America fundraiser.
Cuomo quickly seized on the development, accusing Mamdani of promoting extremism into New York’s politics.
“Having Jeremy Corbyn — someone whose party was found to have committed unlawful acts of discrimination against Jewish people under his leadership – phone-banking for @ZohranKMamdani says everything you need to know,” Cuomo posted on social media. “NY doesn’t need politics of moral compromise. We need leadership that rejects antisemitism, extremism, and division in every form and in every corner.”
Mamdani, for his part, has repeatedly tried to reassure voters that he would advocate for Jewish New Yorkers, reiterating that “antisemitism has no place in this city” and vowing to expand funding for the protection of houses of worship if elected. Yet, for many Jewish voters, his reassurances have not been enough.
