Last week, Zohran Mamdani won the election for mayor of New York. He was elected with 50.4% of the vote (more than one million votes, in absolute terms), versus 41.6% for the centrist Democrat and former Governor of the state of New York, Andrew Cuomo, and 7.1% for Curtin Sliwa of the Republican Party. In June, Mamdani defeated Cuomo and other minor candidates in the primary election of the Democratic Party to become the official nominee of the party.

This election took place after the former Mayor of New York, Eric Adams, was indicted on federal charges of bribery, fraud, and soliciting illegal foreign campaign donations, even though the case against Adams was dismissed with prejudice in April 2025. Mamdani campaigned as a democratic socialist, prioritising issues of affordability. In contrast, Cuomo adopted a centrist stance, highlighting crime prevention and tackling antisemitism as his main themes. Meanwhile, Sliwa, representing the political right, criticised both opponents and promoted a hard-line approach to crime.

On the same 4^th of November, two gubernatorial elections also took place, in Virginia and New Jersey, and they were both won by Democrat candidates, respectively Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill, with a double-digit margin of victory versus their Republican candidates. The two new governors represent the more centrist component of the Democratic party. Sherrill is a former naval officer and federal prosecutor, and Spanberger is a former intelligence officer.

Needless to say, most of the media attention around the globe was attracted by the victory by Mamdani. He was born in 1991 in Uganda to Ugandan-Indian parents who settled in New York. His mother, Mira Nair,  is a renowned filmmaker (and winner of several awards at Cannes and Venice Film Festivals, among others); his father, Mahmood Mamdani, is a distinguished academic at Columbia University. After receiving a bachelor’s degree with a major in Africana studies from Bowdoin College in 2014 Mamdani became involved in local activism and community organising, before fully embracing a political career.

What lessons can we learn from this round of elections? First, they are not representative of the US electorate, as they were held in Democratic strongholds. Second, opinion polls show that Trump’s approval rating continues to fall, having reached 37% at the end of October, but this may not be enough to secure a certain victory by the Democrats in the mid-term elections of November 2026. Third, Trump is not the type of president who will patiently wait to lose the mid-term election and become a lame duck. He will do anything in his power – from gerrymandering to invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807 – to prevent a defeat one year from now, and will likely mount all sorts of legal challenges to contest any such Democratic victory ex-post.

Fourth, while the large victory by the Democratic candidates reinvigorates the morale of Trump’s opponents, Trump may now have a very simple task in highlighting  Mamdani as the prototype of the current Democrats: pro-immigration (being an immigrant himself), hard leftist – even socialist; coming from an ethnic minority (and certainly non-WASP),and in favour of the wealth tax: the sum of all characteristics hated by part of Trump’s electorate, and perhaps by key voters in swing states.

So, while Mamdani’s victory certainly represents a much-needed breather for the Democrats, it may not necessarily represent good news ahead of the next Presidential election – in which Mamdani, in any event, would not be allowed to run, being foreign born.