'Our country has failed them.' Zohran Mamdani talks to USA TODAY about younger voters.

NEW YORK − Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, knows young people propelled his rise to the top of the polls, he told USA TODAY on Oct. 31.

"Younger voters are, in many ways, at the heart of this campaign and where we are in this moment," Mamdani said over the phone. "These are not just the voters who have come out to vote for us at unprecedented levels. They're also the very New Yorkers who've been knocking on doors across the five boroughs."

Amid early voting numbers appearing to skew older ahead of the Nov. 4 election, Mamdani, the 34-year-old democratic socialist state lawmaker, needs Gen Z and millennial New Yorkers to maintain his lead against former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has narrowed a double-digit gap polling gap in the closing days of the race.

Mamdani's June primary victory upset against Cuomo, 67, came with strong enthusiasm among the young, who resonated with his focus on addressing affordability in the nation's largest city. Older people have leaned more toward Cuomo, and older voters are more likely to vote in off-year elections.

But Mamdani looks to his younger supporters who have engaged parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles about his campaign.

"I've heard this again and again from older New Yorkers," he said. "It was a younger family member who came up to them and first made the case about why it was time for a change. And I just so appreciate these younger voters, because again and again, while they've been spoken to with such condescension in our politics, they've shown that they can, in fact, be at the heart of a new kind of politics that puts working people at the heart of it."

Even as he’s urged voters not to get complacent, Mamdani said he’s excited by increases in overall turnout.

“We’re always a stronger democracy when more people participate,” Mamdani said. “What we've sought to show is that the strength of that democracy can also be assessed from its ability to actually deliver on the material needs of working people.”

Cuomo’s campaign didn’t respond to an email request for comment about outreach to young voters.

Appeal with younger Muslim voters

Mamdani's pitch to younger voters has resonated, particularly in immigrant enclaves, especially in fast-growing Muslim and South Asian communities. Youth-heavy immigration has come about amid increases in cost of living, according to a recent city Comptroller's Office analysis.

“He’s gone through all the things we go through,” Yusra Irfan, 36, a social adult day care worker, said of Mamdani while outside of a Friday jummah congregational prayer the candidate attended at the Muslim American Society Youth Center in Brooklyn. “He experienced the same difficulties that we experience.” 

Irfan and others handed out campaign materials in English and Arabic to scores of people leaving the mosque. A campaign effort to engage Muslim New Yorkers resulted in the campaign canvassing 210 of around 300 mosques in the city, a spokesperson said.

Irfan began volunteering on his campaign after seeing Mamdani on TikTok. It’s her first time voting for mayor since moving from India a decade ago, and she was excited about the first Muslim mayor and first Indian mayor. But as a single mother, Irfan appreciated Mamdani’s platform to address costs in the city, especially on his pledge for universal child care.

Asad Dandia, a New York urban historian who is part of Mamdani’s informal “kitchen cabinet” that advises him, said many younger voters have only ever known President Donald Trump, who has frequently attacked Muslims and nonwhite immigrant communities, including with a Muslim ban. That is particularly true in the city’s South Asian communities, Dandia, 32, said.

But with Zohran's campaign, “they get to be part of something that speaks to them,” he said, “someone that represents them. Someone who could be their older cousin or older brother.”

The Mamdani campaign made early outreach in Muslim and South Asian enclaves, but they also did so on the city’s left-leaning college campuses.

Near Columbia University, young voters back Mamdani

“Zohran is a symbol of hope, of what this country could look like and how democracy could actually be restored,” Marisol Bonifaz, 19, a first-year student at Barnard College at a polling site on Columbia University’s satellite campus, in Manhattan’s Harlem neighborhood, said the morning of Nov. 1, when she voted in her first city election.

Bonifaz, a Massachusetts native, has volunteered and registered around 50 other students on Columbia's campus to vote. Students are excited, but they need a plan to vote, she said.

“He’s what I want to see as a change in politics,” said Gabriella Gavazzi, 25, a recent Columbia physical therapy doctoral graduate. She changed her registration from her native Pennsylvania to vote for Mamdani in the general election. “Our politics is just going down the drain right now.”

One man, who refused to give his name but gave his age as 75, said he voted for Cuomo because he thought Mamdani was antisemitic and would destroy the city. Cuomo saved the city during the COVID-19 pandemic, the man said.

Jodie Kovler, 57, an Upper West Side resident who is Jewish, said she cast her vote for Mamdani to make it a better city “for everybody, for every human being.”

Her two children, both young adults in Manhattan, are also voting for Mamdani because they think he gives them the best chance to be able to continue living in their city, adding that the city is "for all young people.”

Mamdani said his focus on affordability is particularly important to young voters.

"Younger people are often denied the legitimacy that other constituencies are granted," Mamdani told USA TODAY. "And it's made to seem as if their struggles are indicative of themselves, as opposed to the ways in which our city and our state and our country has failed them, and we have made life harder and harder for these very young people."

It's become harder for young people to pursue their dreams and ambitions, he said. "What they're looking for is what each and every New Yorker is looking for," he added, "which is a city where they can do more than just struggle to afford to call it home. But in fact, a city where they could pursue the things that brought them here in the first place."

Kovler hadn’t recalled young people this involved and paying attention to politics in some time. The last candidate to motivate young people, she said, was Barack Obama.

As to whether he'd have a Halloween costume, Mamdani said he was dressing as "just a tired politician."

Eduardo Cuevas is based in New York City. Reach him by email at [email protected] or on Signal at emcuevas.01.