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Only 48 hours prior to the New York race for mayor, Michael Lange made a bold electoral prediction – going beyond who would win citywide, and precinct by precinct. The analyst, a political analyst who grew up in New York City, has spent more than ten years in progressive politics and has become a kind of local celebrity recently for his thorough analyses into city data and polling.

He published his extremely precise forecast map – which correctly forecast that Zohran Mamdani was victorious while failed to predict Andrew Cuomo’s solid showing – on his Substack, the Narrative War. Lange has a flair for witty coinages. He highlighted, as an example, the split between the “commie corridor”, stretching from one neighborhood to another area to Astoria, where he predicted (accurately) that Mamdani would win by large leads, and the conservative-leaning zone on Manhattan’s Upper East and Upper West Sides. There, “the Free Press and financial newspapers outrank the mainstream paper” in audience and the majority of electors leaned toward the independent, who ran as a conservative-courting independent.

Election Night Trends and Surprises

How was your election night?

It was necessary since they were adding approximately 200K votes into the tally every few minutes! I was actually a little nervous initially: The candidate was ahead the early vote by a dozen percentage points, but there were two big batches of ballots that came in after that and the advantage went from 12% to 8%. It was concerning.

Understand, there was a world in which election day went somewhat badly for him, in which Cuomo was going to end up basically increasing his support from the earlier contest. But Mamdani added half a million supporters to his primary coalition, and this was critical why he succeeded. He went out and massively expanded his base from the first round.

Coalition Building

Where did the mayor-elect get additional support from?

He built the coalition that the left always wanted to build: diverse racially, it’s young, it’s renters and individuals squeezed by affordability. He gained considerably with minority communities, working- and middle-class voters, relative to the earlier election. Plus he further maximized his base of liberal progressives, young leftists, and immigrant groups. Victory required without making those significant inroads.

He built the alliance that the left long aimed for: multiracial, young, tenants and people squeezed by affordability

There were also some supporters of both candidates – is this significant?

It’s definitely a genuine phenomenon, confined to Hispanic laborers, south Asians and Muslims. Electors in immigrant strongholds that supported the former president previously went for the progressive now. But it’s not that he was gaining Caucasian laborers and Trump loyalists.

Voter Participation and Impact

One of the big stories of the election was the record participation. Who benefited?

Each candidate. Turnout was much greater than I had expected. I figured it could go over two million, but it reached 2.3M – which is a huge number of participants. Existed a decent anti-Mamdani block, who were motivated, but his supporters was equally driven, and that was enough to secure victory.

You predicted he’d get over half the ballots. Is he on course for that?

Right now you would say he’s likely to get over 50%. He’s at 50.4% but there’s still around 200K ballots left to report as of Wednesday morning. Thus it’s not it’s definitive, but I think it’s likely, and I wish he achieves it so then no one can say the Republican was a spoiler.

GOP Decline

Curtis Sliwa, the conservative contender, was another surprise. His vote plummeted.

He lost any district in any area. Including Tottenville in Staten Island, similar to an 88% Trump area. That truly surprised me. Cuomo kept very white areas, affluent zones and very religiously Jewish areas, and plus gained many Republicans on the island who had a strong turnout. I believe there was a lot of tactical voting by GOP voters. They were doing it prior to Trump endorsed for the candidate, but it assisted. It might have changed the outcome unless the winning alliance hadn’t grown.

The “Commie Corridor”

What about your much mentioned left-wing base – was support for the candidate overwhelming in those parts of the boroughs?

In my view there was a little dilution of the progressive zone in some areas like Astoria or Greenpoint that have older Caucasian residents. There, for example, the Greek landlords and homeowners all went for Cuomo. So there existed some opposition. But overall, mostly the leftist base is a key factor why Mamdani prevailed – he scored between high percentages in specific neighborhoods.

Jewish Voters

Prior to the vote there was coverage on whether the candidate was gaining ground with Jewish New Yorkers. Any indication that he succeeded?

Exist neighborhoods with a lot of secular and more progressive-leaning Jews – like specific locales – where he did well. But in the affluent districts like the Upper East Side, his position on Israel was influential in those places. Similarly in the more middle-class Jewish areas including Forest Hills, Rego Park, or Bronx areas – they all leaned the independent. And also, you have newcomers from the former Soviet Union in southern Brooklyn, who were pretty staunchly supportive. So I don’t know if there were crazy narrative-busters on this one, but he retained more progressive Jewish neighborhoods and even parts of the another locale with large leads.

Political Impact

Has Mamdani rewritten what New York represents in politics? Will the commie corridor serve as a springboard for progressive contenders?

Absolutely, it’s no coincidence that key political leaders from progressives come from a handful of neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. I’m sure that there will be more of that – people will emerge from these areas to be promoted to higher office.

But I think that every city in the US can have their own commie corridor. Cities are the centers of leftwing power in the nation – since they’re young, people rent and they are places where people are crushed by the disparities we face.