Voting opens in New York as Mamdani seeks to become first Muslim mayor

Voting has opened for the highly anticipated New York City mayoral elections, with a large turnout expected as polls suggest the city will elect its first Muslim mayor. 

Over 735,000 votes were already cast during nine days of early in person voting, which is four times the number of early ballots cast during the 2021 election. 

Zohran Mamdani, the 34-year-old assembly member who describes himself as a democratic socialist, has been leading opinion polls for several months. 

In June, Mamdani defeated former New York governor Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary by nearly 13 percent points. 

Cuomo is now running in the election as an independent, while veteran Republican Curtis Sliwa is also in the race. 

Outgoing mayor Eric Adams was set to re-run as an independent, but dropped out of the race in September. His name will still be on the ballot. 

Mamdani’s campaign has focused on making the city more affordable by raising corporate taxes and taxes on the wealthiest, freezing stabilised rent rates and increasing the volume of subsidised housing. 

Polls will close in New York at 9pm ET, with results expected to come in shortly after. 

Mamdani earns endorsement from influential Orthodox-Jewish community leader in NYC

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Trump has thrown his weight behind Cuomo, and has said that if Mamdani wins, “it’s going to be hard for me as president to give a lot of money to New York". 

He doubled down in a social media post on Monday, stating that in the event of a Mamdani win, it would be “highly unlikely that I will be contributing Federal Funds, other than the very minimum as required”.

Although Trump is a Republican, he urged voters to go for independent Cuomo rather than Sliwa. 

“Whether you personally like Andrew Cuomo or not, you really have no choice. You must vote for him, and hope he does a fantastic job,” the president said.

The Center for the Study of Organized Hate revealed in a 20-page document on Monday that Islamophobic and xenophobic discourse surrounding Mamdani on X had a reach of some 1.5 billion views between his Democratic primary win in June and the end of October. 

The content stemmed from 35,522 original posts, authored by 17,752 unique accounts on X.