Political baby Zohran Mamdani is firing up Boomers — and it could be a bad sign for his bid to become New York City’s next mayor.
Voters 50 and up accounted for nearly 60% of ballots cast during the first two days of early voting in the city’s mayoral election, data shows.
The early flood of ballots cast by Gen Xers, Baby Boomers and the oldest New Yorkers — first reported by Gothamist — is likely far more helpful to ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, 67, a moderate looking to keep the 34-year-old socialist Mamdani out of City Hall, said Stephen Graves, president of Gotham Polling.
“It is unquestionable that the higher the turnout the more it favors Cuomo,” he said.
“The more the turnout, you pick up more people who are non-partisan and aren’t super-engaged and that favors the middle.”
Roughly 164,000 voters hit polling sites Saturday and Sunday, with voters aged 50 and up accounting for 95,000 of those ballots, city Board of Election data shows.
The turnout so far has drastically outpaced the nearly 67,000 votes cast during the June Democratic primary’s first two days.
Mamdani, during that contest, rode a wave of enthusiasm among younger voters to shockingly wallop Cuomo and clinch the Democratic nomination.
But Graves said while Mamdani seems a lock to win again among young voters, his overall support isn’t particularly deep.
“The reality is Mamdani has very deep support in the young, but it’s not very broad, whereas Cuomo has deep support in the 50-plus and they tend to show up the most,” he said.
Cuomo, who is running as an independent, could be handicapped by the presence of GOP nominee Curtis Sliwa, Graves said.
The consistently third-place-polling Sliwa has defiantly resisted calls to step aside in the general election to give the second-place Cuomo a better shot at toppling Mamdani.
“What we don’t know really how many of Curtis’ voters decide that he can’t win so they are not going to waste their vote and vote for Cuomo, who they don’t like,” he said.
“There are a lot of Cuomo voters not voting for Cuomo, but against Mamdani.”
Bigwig New York City Republican John Catsimatidis — Sliwa’s longtime friend and his boss at WABC radio who has urged him to drop out, to no avail — cast his ballot for Cuomo on the third day of early voting Monday.
“I voted for Cuomo because in a city that’s 70% Democrat, he’s the only Democrat in the race,” Catsimatidis, 77, told The Post from his Upper East Side polling place, joined by ex. Gov. David Paterson, who also cast his ballot for Cuomo.
“The other guy [Mamdani] is a socialist,” Catsimatidis said.
Nearly 80% of undecided voters in the election fall into the 50-plus category, a recent AARP poll found.
Turnout for New York City’s mayoral elections tends to be roughly 1.1 million voters, Graves said — forecasting that this contest will draw up to 1.7 million voters.
While more turnout could mean more Cuomo votes, Graves said it’s unclear how high it would have to be to get enough independents out to make the race close between the ex-gov and the democratic socialist Mamdani.
“But I do know if we get to 1.6 to 1.8 (million) it will help,” he said.
The older-voter turnout raised early alarms among some of Mamdani’s backers, notably frequent Cuomo foe state Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-Queens), who deemed it “not a good sign for Zohran.”
“In my community, working-class older democrats have organized ‘against socialists,’ and there has been no effort to reach out to them by the left,” he posted on X. “Even though many of them stood with me in fighting against Cuomo in the past, they now stand with him.”
Mamdani, when asked about the turnout Monday, highlighted his campaign’s focus on affordability as a message that resonates with seniors.
“I think we should always celebrate when more New Yorkers are going to the polls,” he said. “And I continue to be confident in our campaign as well as in our outreach to voters above the age of 55 and also, I will not allow myself to be complacent.”
— Additional reporting by Matthew Fischetti
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