In the aftermath of the GOP’s decisive victory in 2024, I wrote a column arguing that Democrats could appeal to working-class voters again by embracing big government populism and targeting the ultra-rich ruling class as the root of the layman’s problems. Since then, Zohran Mamdani’s upset victory in the New York City mayoral primaries seems to have indicated a shifting tide in Democratic party politics in favor of this exact form of populism. Some have been quick to point to Mamdani’s recent victory as proof that this is the party’s future; writing for The New York Times, historian Timothy Shenk recently declared economic populism the winning strategy for Democrats, citing the key to Mamdani’s victory as “a scorching economic message delivered by political outsiders standing up to the powerful.”
While it’s easy to view Mamdani’s win as a bellwether of change, proponents of left-wing populism must remain cautious in their optimism. Mamdani’s formula might succeed in New York, but it’s unclear how much his populism is actually appealing to its primary target — the American working class.
The story becomes more complicated when we observe how the city’s demographic blocs voted in the primaries. Mamdani dominated with college graduates, winning 45% of them compared to Cuomo’s 28%. He also won with higher and middle income voters by a safe margin. But it was actually Cuomo who led with lower-income voters, winning 49% to Mamdani’s 38%. In fact, Mamdani’s strongest base of support was in what has been deemed the “Commie Corridor,” a string of neighborhoods stretching from northwest Brooklyn up to western Queens. These neighborhoods are largely gentrified or in the process of gentrifying and are noted for their young, renter-heavy populations. Mamdani also performed well in more established upper-class neighborhoods, including parts of brownstone Brooklyn and Manhattan.
Mamdani’s campaign rhetoric suggests a story of an optimistic working class standing up to the elites and fighting for their economic needs, but the election results seem to tell a different story. The populist rhetoric has been successful enough to secure Mamdani the nomination, but it has apparently not been successful in appealing to the majority of working-class voters as intended. Instead, Mamdani’s victory reflects a broader national trend — one in which the high-earning college graduates are shifting to the left, supporting a progressive economic agenda, and becoming the Democratic party’s new base. Meanwhile, the working-class voters, once reliably Democratic, have shifted solidly towards the GOP.
The problem is that this is precisely the kind of trend that the Democrats should be trying to break by embracing economic populism. It’s great that wealthier voters are moving into the Democratic column, but the loss of working-class voters is costing Democrats key battleground states in the Rust Belt during national elections. It’s evident in New York that the populist strategy isn’t working to attract Trump voters: many of the neighborhoods in the city that voted solidly for Trump in the 2024 election also voted solidly for Cuomo in the mayoral primaries, including much of Staten Island and Southern Brooklyn.
It’s ultimately difficult to imagine that Mamdani’s success in New York can be generalized to predict a broader success of left-wing populism in national elections. The young, urban renters who made up Mamdani’s base in the city aren’t going to make the difference for Democrats on the national level. So what’s the takeaway for Democrats?
They should remember that there is a long way to go before the party can regain the trust of working-class voters. Ever since the Democratic establishment rebuffed Bernie Sanders in 2016, the GOP has gotten a firm hold on the working class. The nature of our partisan politics is now such that — even if Democrats say all the right things, using anti-elite messaging and proposing popular economic policies — they are still going to struggle to win these voters back simply because they are Democrats.
Despite these obstacles, economic populism is still the way forward for Democrats. After all, turning their back on this strategy is what led Democrats into this mess in the first place — and there is plenty of reason to view Mamdani’s success with optimism. His victory has demonstrated that left-wing populism can be effectively marketed to a broad, diverse audience. But for now, progressives should remain cautiously optimistic. They can enjoy the moment, but they must not lose sight of the need to refine their message so that it reaches the voters who need to hear it most.
Opinion articles represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
