Zohran Mamdani's mysterious national polls
The Argument says that he's unpopular, but low name recognition calls that conclusion into question.
Lakshya Jain, writing for The Argument, says that while NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is popular in his home city, his national polls are much lower:
Over our last three national surveys, we have polled the national favorability ratings of five Democrats: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, Zohran Mamdani, and Chuck Schumer. When comparing aggregate favorability ratings across our entire polling dataset, Mamdani’s net favorability numbers (minus 13) are worse than everyone else’s, save for Schumer.
Intuitively these numbers seem plausible. Socialists have been touting Mamdani and his campaign as the future of the Democratic Party, but New York City is a very different place than the rest of the country, and almost all of the differences do not favor him. Jain seems to be attributing his national numbers entirely to his politics (“his ideas are not to be used as a national party template”), but even if we set that aside his ethnicity is probably also relevant.
Still, I would take The Argument’s numbers with a grain of salt. Here’s why:
Unfortunately there is not much other national polling about Mamdani; in fact, the only other one I could find was this YouGov survey from July. Still, the difference is stark. In The Argument, Mamdani’s net numbers are at -14; but in YouGov, he was above water by +1.
That’s a 15 point swing over the past few months, but you can’t attribute it to Americans getting to know Mamdani better and not liking what they’ve learned. On the contrary, his name recognition levels here seem roughly identical. Instead, I think there are two possibilities:
Mamdani’s low name recognition is associated with opinions about him that are extremely unsettled, so while they may be bouncing all over the place it is dubious to look at any one poll (or even an average of them) as indicative of where he’ll ultimately end up.
Ferocious attacks from Trump, Cuomo, and the Israel lobby in particular have successfully driven his numbers down.
The Argument supposedly conducted monthly surveys in August, September, and October; if they release that data by date (rather than simply averaging it) we may be able to see whether it fits the pattern suggested in (1) or (2). If they trend continuously downward, that will be a strong (and depressing) indicator that the national campaigns of xenophobia and red-baiting against Mamdani have had their intended effect. But if they fluctuate then I think we should concede that he is simply an unknown quantity until his name recognition gets a bit higher.
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