Remember a few years ago when conservatives were claiming they were poised to flip inner city black voters? Socialist New York City Democrat mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani may be about to once again decisively prove how elusive that goal remains.
The fact has not changed that urban blacks are intensely loyal to the Democrat camp. Two Big Apple polls dropped in September lead to the inevitable conclusion that the letter D earned by Mamdani when he captured the city’s blue primary in June is the single most important factor black voters in Gotham look to on their ballots. Even the black candidate in the race, current Mayor Eric Adams, who won his seat as a Democrat but is now seeking re-election as an independent, can’t get black support without the word Democrat next to his name.
“Mamdani continues to hold a commanding lead – 21 points – in the mayoral race, fueled partly by a growing black base, according to a new poll” released September 16, The New York Post reported that same day.
These survey results were dramatically different from polling in June that found Democrat primary opponent Andrew Cuomo garnering strong black support. Ah, but that was before Mamdani secured the coveted D.
A CBS News/YouGov poll conducted from September 7-13 also unearthed a Mamdani surge with black voters. A stout 46% of blacks surveyed said they were supporting him, compared to only 31% backing Cuomo and 8% going with Adams.
What’s going on here? Did anything change from June to September in the various candidates’ platforms, stated agendas, etc.? No. The major difference is that, after June, Mamdani had the official Democrat brand label affixed next to his name.
Republican officials and conservative activists over the past several years have enjoyed reciting the list of logical reasons why urban black voters should be attracted to the GOP. Crime and the wage-suppressing effects of massive unchecked illegal immigration are chief among them. But is that more wishful fantasy than hard reality?
“Black voters may be Democrats, but we are not socialists – period,” Darius Jones, executive director of the National Black Empowerment Action Fund, told Newsweek for an article on Mamdani dated September 2. “Our community wants advancement, not experiments.”
Yet Jones’ statement that New York City blacks do not care for big government flies runs afoul of a statistical problem.
“In a nation in which blacks comprise 13 percent of the population, they make up 42 percent of households in public housing projects and 48 percent of those receiving housing vouchers to pay their rent,” Howard Husock, a senior fellow in Domestic Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote in a September 8 op-ed in The New York Sun.
Husock specifically noted there are “any number of reasons to be concerned about the over-representation of blacks in subsidized housing, perhaps most of all because these programs are correlated with low rates of employment and long-term dependency.”
The political ramifications should be obvious. You can’t spell “long-term dependency” on government without a D.
“It’s true that Black Americans are overrepresented among those who receive government assistance,” an article at The Conversation reported February 27. “For example, Black people make up just 14% of the US population but 30% of those enrolled in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program.”
Leftists see all this as an opportunity for Mamdani to solidify his support among black voters.
“We tend to support progressive issues like social programs, investment in good union jobs, affordable housing measures and universal healthcare,” leftist activist Asha Ransby-Sporn wrote of black voters Aug. 7 for avowedly pro-socialist website In These Times.
Ransby-Sporn asserts that far from being opposed to Mamdani, Democrats in the early summer simply had more name recognition for former prominent Democrat governor Cuomo.
“Many Black voters went into the [NYC Democrat primary] election undecided and unfamiliar with Mamdani. Two weeks before early voting began, a Data for Progress poll showed that a full 45% of Black voters indicated they simply ‘hadn’t heard enough’ about Mamdani to have an opinion – while just 4% of Black voters hadn’t heard enough to have an opinion of Cuomo,” Ransby-Sporn states.
“The same poll showed that, among Black voters who did know about Mamdani, his favorability was quite strong – 79%, compared with Cuomo’s 69%. In a city where rent and the cost of living are high, it makes sense that Black New Yorkers (who disproportionately bear those burdens) responded to a candidate with clear proposals to make the city more affordable.”
Rather than driving blacks to Republicans, a sense of betrayal by the Democrat establishment may cause them instead to look to progressive socialists to maintain the hallowed Great Society of Lyndon Johnson that has long served as a linchpin of black political identity.
“The Black vote is defined by a large active group of older residents who still follow the cues of civil rights leaders and local political elites,” Alvin Tillery, founder of super PAC the Alliance for Black Equality, told Newsweek. “For Mamdani to break through, he needs to keep working on winning over those elites or focus on turning out younger Black voters who are not very engaged in the process.”
Leftist activist Ransby-Sporn also sees black youth as a promising avenue for Mamdani.
“Younger Black voters tend to get little investment from traditional campaign operatives, who tend to write us off as unlikely to turn out (thus increasing our disengagement), but we were actually one of Mamdani’s best demographics – presumably reached by the campaign’s widely resonant digital media content,” she states.
“An exit poll by [George Soros-funded New York City-based radical activist group] Vera Action showed that Black voters under 50 went more than 70% for Mamdani, compared with 36% of Black voters over 50.”
The bottom line: If older blacks in New York City remain steadfastly loyal to the Democrat brand, Mamdani wins. If younger urban blacks put off by what they perceive to be an out-of-touch Democrat elite mobilize for change, they are more apt to seek out progressive challengers to that ossified establishment. In that case, Mamdani wins again.
How ever one looks at it, the September polling strongly suggests that, in New York City at least, the dream of a black exodus from the Democratic Party remains more fairy tale than grassroots happening.