Cuomo narrows Mamdani’s lead, as older voters flock to the polls for early voting

This piece first ran as part of The Countdown, our daily newsletter rounding up all the developments in the New York City mayor’s race. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. There is one week to the election.

❗Cuomo narrows in

• Who are the early voters heading in droves to the polls? Data indicates that most of them so far are older New Yorkers — an encouraging sign for Andrew Cuomo, according to Gothamist.

• Voters over 55 made up more than 50% of the turnout in the first two days of early voting this weekend. Recent polling from Quinnipiac indicates that Cuomo is tied with Zohran Mamdani for voters aged 50 to 64, while he has a slight lead with his fellow boomers over 65.

• Meanwhile, Mamdani has a significant lead with voters under 49 years old.

• Mamdani told reporters that he wasn’t worried about the surge of older voters, but his campaign said differently in an email to his supporters on Monday.

• “We’re 3 days into early voting, turnout is already 5 times higher than the 2021 mayoral election — and the highest number of early voters so far are in age brackets where Cuomo either ties or leads Zohran in the latest polls,” said an email that urged Mamdani’s base to get out the vote.

• During the primary, which Mamdani won, younger voters surged in early voting.

📊 Numbers to know

• Cuomo has cut Mamdani’s lead in half a week before the election, according to a poll released Monday from Suffolk University.

• Mamdani now leads with 44% of the vote to Cuomo’s 34%, followed by Republican Curtis Sliwa with 11%. The remaining pool of voters includes 7% who are undecided.

• Suffolk’s last poll in September, when Mayor Eric Adams was still in the race, showed Mamdani 20 points ahead of Cuomo at 45% to 25%.

• David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, argued that Sliwa was the “one person in New York City whose voters could have an outsized impact on the outcome.”

• Sliwa’s 11% of voters could be the key blocking Cuomo from victory, said Paleologos, who added that 36% of these voters picked Cuomo as a second choice and only 2% chose Mamdani.

• Sliwa has repeatedly rebuffed calls to quit. It’s too late to take names off the ballot — Adams and Jim Walden, who also dropped out, will appear after missing the deadline to remove their names — and votes that have already been cast cannot be redirected.

🎤 ‘This man is not an antisemite’

• Manhattan state Sen. Liz Krueger, an influential Jewish Democrat who has served in the state government since 2002, greeted voters in her district with Mamdani on Monday.

• Krueger called herself “a Jew and a Zionist.” She said of Mamdani, “This man is not an antisemite,” according to New York Daily News reporter Chris Sommerfeldt.

• Krueger endorsed Mamdani in September after backing Brad Lander in the primary. She admitted that Mamdani was “less experienced” but said that meeting with him and learning about his positions persuaded her to support him.

• Krueger represents much of the Upper East Side and Midtown, and her district turned out strongly for Cuomo in the Democratic primary.

🏆 Endorsing from the Knesset

• Ahmad Tibi, a Palestinian-Israeli member of the Knesset — Israel’s legislature — since 1999, gave his endorsement to Mamdani yesterday.

• “A young eloquent visionary who brings a fresh spirit of social justice and universal values to the New York elections, Zohran is a leader who unites all the city’s communities: Christians, Muslims and Jews,” Tibi said in a speech in Hebrew.

• Tibi also noted the “racist and Islamophobic attacks” on Mamdani by his critics and opponents in recent weeks. “I’m confident he will defeat the racists for the benefit of all New Yorkers, becoming a symbol of unity, tolerance and hope,” he said, adding a “Go Zohran” cheer in Hebrew, English and Arabic.

🗳 Rabbis go to the polls

• Chaim Steinmetz and Elliot Cosgrove, two prominent Upper East Side rabbis, went to the polls together on Sunday. Steinmetz shared a photo of them arm-in-arm with “I voted early” stickers, writing, “How good and pleasant it is for rabbis to vote together.”

• Both Steinmetz and Cosgrove have urged their congregations to vote against Mamdani.

• Cosgrove’s sermon decrying Mamdani was quoted in an open letter signed by more than 1,000 rabbis across the country, which warned that Mamdani would endanger “Jews in every city.” But Cosgrove himself has not signed the letter, telling us that is his policy.

📣 Rosenberg rallies against Mamdani

• Sid Rosenberg, the right-wing Jewish shock jock who recently said Mamdani would celebrate another 9/11 attack during an interview with Cuomo, spoke at a press conference focused on consolidating support against Mamdani yesterday. He reemphasized the 9/11 remark, saying, “I really meant it.”

• “Everything America stands for, everything New York City stands for, everything good New Yorkers and Jewish people stand for, this guy wants to destroy,” Rosenberg said. He was flanked by Dov Hikind, an Orthodox politician who was Sliwa’s strongest Jewish ally until switching his support to Cuomo on Sunday, and actor Michael Rapaport.

• Rapaport, who has emerged as a leading pro-Israel influencer, has been a vocal and often crude critic of Mamdani.

📺 Mamdani on Jon Stewart

• The 9/11 controversy also came up during Mamdani’s interview on “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart on Monday night.

• “You are clearly right now in the front-running position,” Stewart said to Mamdani. “I can tell, because they’ve gone 9/11 on you.”

• Mamdani had a friendly audience with the left-wing comedian, who said in July, “People yell at me about what I say sometimes about Palestine and what’s going on in Israel and they call me a ‘bad Jew.’” The interview did not touch on Israel or the war in Gaza.

🦍 ‘800-pound gorilla’

• President Trump, who has frequently opined on the race, could come out on top regardless of the victor, according to Politico.

• Mamdani would give Trump a left-wing foil to exploit as he continues to deploy federal power in Democratic cities like Portland, Chicago, Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles.

• Meanwhile, Cuomo faces a potential Justice Department inquiry into whether he lied to Congress. That could give Trump the kind of leverage he wielded over Adams, whose federal corruption charges were dropped in a move seen as making him beholden to Trump.

• Rev. Ruben Diaz, a former state and city lawmaker and Trump ally, told Politico that “Trump is in a good position no matter what happens on Nov. 4.” He added, “Any one of them will have a losing battle against Trump. He is an 800-pound gorilla.”