Key Points
- Zohran Mamdani's victory to become the next mayor of New York City could invigorate the national Democratic movement, experts say.
- The Democrats also saw victories in other elections this week in left-leaning states.
- The winning streak could be the momentum the Democrats need as they prepare for next November's midterm election.
Zohran Mamdani, the 34-year-old mayor-elect of New York City, has received a groundswell of support in the United States and overseas for his socialist-democratic platform and energising personality.
Mamdani has made history as the first Muslim and person of South Asian descent to be elected as the city's mayor.
His victory follows a series of political wins for the Democratic Party, with key elections in the United States just one year away.
But experts have told SBS News that while his popularity could help boost the polls in the Democrats' favour, they have work to do to repair their image on a national level.
Why is Zohran Mamdani so popular?
Mark Rolfe, a lecturer in the school of social sciences at the University of NSW, told SBS News that Mamdani's election has been unusually popular around the world.
"I don't think the election of the mayor of Sydney would evoke such international interest," he said.
"But looking around America, Australia and Britain, you've got this constant theme of what is going to happen to our young generations, and we've got all these old farts in charge who seem out of touch.
"It's understandable that Mamdani's youth and focus on affordability evoke such interest."
Rolfe said that Mamdani's policies, such as freezing rents on certain properties and free childcare, would put him as a mainstream left candidate in other political spectrums, including Australia.
Ameisha Cross, a Democratic Party strategist and former adviser to Barack Obama, told ABC Radio National that Mamdani's focus on affordability won him his landslide victory.
"Now York has one of the largest economies in the world, and it's also a city where people have been crying out about affordability, not being able to pay rent, not being able to afford groceries," she said on Thursday morning.
"He spoke to those issues and made that the central point of his campaign."
She likened his campaign to that of US President Donald Trump's run to victory in 2016, saying that despite being on different sides of the political spectrum, they appealed to voters for similar reasons.
"They wanted somebody who was seen as an outsider, somebody who didn't have any elongated political past. They wanted somebody who spoke about change and brought about something different," she said.
Democrats win in other states
Besides Mamdani's win, in Virginia and New Jersey, moderate Democrats Abigail Spanberger, and Mikie Sherrill, won the elections for governor with commanding leads.
Both candidates had sought to tie their opponents to Trump in an effort to harness frustration among Democratic and independent voters over his chaotic tenure.
More than one-third of voters in those states said opposing Trump was a factor in their vote, according to exit polls conducted for a consortium of US networks and the Associated Press. Those voters overwhelmingly cast ballots for the Democrats.
Perhaps the biggest practical boost to Democrats on Tuesday came out of California, where voters gave Democratic politicians the power to redraw the state's congressional map, expanding a national battle over redistricting that will shape the race for the US House of Representatives.
Donald Trump reacts to Mamdani win
Trump said that Mamdani's victory was expected and he did not think it was good for Republicans.
"I'm not sure it was good for anybody, but we had an interesting evening, and we learned a lot," he told officials in the White House on Wednesday.
In a post on his Truth Social network, he cited anonymous "pollsters" suggesting the Republican defeats were due to the government shutdown and the fact that his own name wasn't on the ballots.
US vice president JD Vance said on Wednesday it was "idiotic to overreact to a couple of elections" in states that lean Democratic. He nonetheless suggested Republicans laser in on the economy.
"We need to focus on the home front," he wrote on X. "We're going to keep on working to make a decent life affordable in this country, and that's the metric by which we'll ultimately be judged in 2026 and beyond."
Democrats seen as 'out of touch'
Rolfe said these victories were to be expected, and that the Democrats have to "sort out what they stand for" if they want to keep the momentum going ahead of next year's midterm elections, and the 2028 presidential election.
The 2026 midterm election will primarily take place next November, when all the seats in the US House of Representatives will be contested.
While the parties of the current president tend to lose seats at these elections, Rolfe said an "anti-Trump" protest vote is not a sure thing.
He flagged that opinion polling in the US shows that people see the Democrats as more "out of touch" than Trump.
"You've got the problem for the Democrats as a whole of trying to knit together a message for the midterms next year, where they have to appeal to constituencies across America," he said.
He said the Democrats have "compounded their problems of what they stand for" during and since Trump's first presidency, saying they will need a unifying platform if they want to keep winning elections.
"The Democrats have a real problem if they're just relying on next year as an anti-Trump protest," he said.
Cross said that the Democratic Party needs to listen to voter concerns about affordability and the cost of living and prioritise elevating people to the middle class.
"You don't have to have multimillion-dollar consultants to tell you what the people are saying," she said.
"Right now, far too many Americans are feeling as though this country has left them behind."
Cross said that both the Democrats and Republicans have to focus on appealing to their core supporters.
Republican strategist John Feehery said Trump needs to be more concerned with his domestic presence.
"The problem with Trump is he's trying to save the world, but he's forgetting about the people who brought him here, and they're not doing that great", Reuters reported on Thursday.
"He needs less running around and more focus on what the political problems are at home."
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