New Yorkers looked set to elect a young Muslim leftist as Mayor on Tuesday (November 4, 2025) as U.S. voters cast judgment for the first time on Donald Trump’s tumultuous second presidency in nationwide local elections.

While Zohran Mamdani’s rise has dominated headlines, elections for Governor in Virginia and New Jersey could also be revealing gauges of the U.S. political mood nearly 10 months since Mr. Trump’s return to the White House.

Democratic wins in those states may indicate a revived opposition ahead of next year’s midterm elections to decide control of Congress.

In New York, Mr. Mamdani, aged just 34, is a self-described socialist who was virtually unknown before his upset victory to secure the Democratic nomination.

He has focused on reducing living costs for ordinary New Yorkers, building support through his informal personal style and social-media-friendly clips of him walking the streets chatting with voters.

Unabashedly playing the race card, President Trump on Tuesday labelled Mr. Mamdani, who would be New York’s first Muslim Mayor, as a “Jew hater.”

“Any Jewish person that votes for Zohran Mamdani, a proven and self professed JEW HATER, is a stupid person!!!” the Republican President posted on his social media platform.

Mr. Mamdani was on about 44% in latest polls, several points ahead of former state Governor Andrew Cuomo who is running as an independent.

Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, founder of the Guardian Angels citizen crime patrol group, was on 24% — a margin that could sway the vote if enough of his backers shifted to Mr. Cuomo.

Turnout by midday, with nine hours of voting remaining was 1.195 million, exceeding the total of 1.14 million votes cast in 2021, which saw the election of current Mayor Eric Adams who bowed out when his reelection campaign was hit by scandals and corruption allegations. He endorsed Mr. Cuomo, 67.

Denise Gibbs, 46, a doctor of physiotherapy, voted at a school in Brooklyn.

“I sure hope it improves the city. I want to see it decrease divisiveness and increase livelihoods of working-class households and services for children,” she said, wearing green scrubs.

Polls close at 9:00 pm (0200 GMT Wednesday).

Mamdani’s improbable rise

The race has centred on cost of living, crime and how each candidate would handle Mr. Trump, who has threatened to withhold federal funds from New York.

Syracuse University political science professor Grant Reeher said Mr. Mamdani’s win would set up a clash with Mr. Trump.

“Mr. Trump will treat New York City more aggressively,” he said. “There will be some kind of political showdown.”

Mr. Mamdani’s improbable rise highlights the Democratic Party’s debate over a centrist or a leftist future.

“I think that this has to be a party that actually allows Americans to see themselves in it,” Mr. Mamdani said last week.

But Mr. Cuomo said there was “a civil war in the Democratic Party.”

“You have an extreme radical left that is run by the socialists that is challenging what they would call moderate Democrats. I’m a moderate Democrat,” he said after voting.

In New Jersey, Democratic Party candidate Mikie Sherrill, a former Navy helicopter pilot, faces off against Republican Jack Ciattarelli, a businessman backed by Mr. Trump.

In Virginia’s race for Governor, Democratic candidate Abigail Spanberger has been polling ahead of Virginia’s Republican Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears.

Both sides wheeled out big guns, with former President Barack Obama rallying support for Ms. Spanberger and Mr. Sherrill over the weekend and Trump scheduling tele-rallies for both Virginia and New Jersey on the eve of voting.

Mr. Obama also reportedly spoke to Mr. Mamdani over the weekend but — reflecting the internal party debate — held off endorsing him.

Emailed bomb threats involving polling stations across New Jersey forced the brief closure of several sites, said state Attorney General Matthew Platkin.

Mr. Mamdani called the threats “incredibly concerning.”

“It’s an illustration of the attacks we are seeing on our democracy,” he said after voting in Astoria, Queens.

Published – November 05, 2025 02:28 am IST

Early voting for New York’s next mayor begins on Saturday (October 25, 2025) with an outsider Democratic Party candidate the favorite to upend the city’s politics and face down President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly attacked him.

The twisting race has seen state lawmaker Zohran Mamdani, a self-described socialist, surge from the political wilderness to become the frontrunner in a campaign in which the current mayor bowed out and the onetime Democratic favorite lost his own primary.

The 34-year-old Mr. Mamdani’s once unlikely campaign has been turbo-charged by eager campaigning by young New Yorkers in particular.

An emphasis on the soaring cost of living has also resonated, with the Queens-based lawmaker promising to freeze rent for two million New Yorkers in rent-stabilized properties.

In the latest twist, scandal-tainted current mayor Eric Adams backed the second-place candidate, 67-year-old former state governor Andrew Cuomo — after previously calling him a “snake and a liar.”

Early voting allows New Yorkers to cast a ballot from Saturday (October 25, 2025) until November 2, with Election Day on November 4 and the winner taking office in the New Year.

Mr. Mamdani had 47% support and led Cuomo by 18 points in the latest citywide poll, conducted by Victory Insights between October 22 and 23. Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, 71, was at 16%.

Adams, who has been mired in corruption allegations linked to his term in office, dropped out of the race on September 28 but did not initially endorse a rival.

“You can’t freeze rent, but you are lying and telling people you could — we’re fighting against a snake oil salesman,” Adams said Thursday with Cuomo at his side.

“Gentrifiers have raised the rent in the city… and (Mamdani’s) the king of the gentrifiers.”

It is unclear what impact Adams’s endorsement will have on the race.

“It is possible, but extremely unlikely, Cuomo can catch Mamdani,” said Lincoln Mitchell, a political science professor at Columbia University, saying the former governor’s “tough guy persona” dates from another era.

‘Affordability crisis’

The race has been dominated by the issue of cost of living, as well as by how each candidate would handle Trump, who has threatened to withhold federal funds from the city where he made his name as a property developer and reality TV star.

Mr. Trump has branded Mr. Mamdani, who wants to make bus travel and childcare in the city of 8.5 million people free, a “communist.”

“I was always very generous with New York, even when you had opposition there,” Mr. Trump said this month.

“I wouldn’t be generous to a communist guy that’s going to take the money and throw it out the window.”

Mr. Mamdani has said he would cooperate with Trump if it brought down the cost of living in the city, while Sliwa has said he would seek to “negotiate” with the president and Cuomo has said he would “confront” the commander-in-chief.

“I’ve lived in New York for 10 years almost. I’ve always been… not necessarily always struggling, but trying to hustle and get things together,” Mamdani supporter and tenant organizer Lex Rountree, 27, told AFP.

“It feels strange to kind of think about what it would look like to have some of that ease” under Mamdani, Rountree added.

Mamdani’s campaign received a lift on Friday when Hakeem Jeffries, a New York lawmaker and the top Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives, endorsed him.

“Mamdani has relentlessly focused on addressing the affordability crisis and explicitly committed to being a mayor for all New Yorkers, including those who do not support his candidacy,” the leading Democrat said.

Mamdani will bring star firepower to the table Sunday when he appears alongside leftist Senator Bernie Sanders and lawmaker Alexandria Ocasio Cortez at a “get out the vote” rally in Forest Hills Stadium in Queens.

Published – October 25, 2025 07:25 am IST