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Only two days before the New York mayoral election, Michael Lange issued a bold electoral prediction – going beyond who would win citywide, and precinct by precinct. Lange, a political analyst born and raised in the city, has spent over a decade in left-leaning activism and emerged as a kind of well-known figure recently for his thorough analyses into city data and polling.

He released his extremely precise prediction map – accurately predicting that the progressive candidate was victorious although missing the independent candidate’s strong performance – on his Substack, his platform. He possesses a talent for witty coinages. He highlighted, for instance, the divide between the “commie corridor”, stretching from one neighborhood to Bushwick to a third locale, where he predicted (correctly) that the left-wing candidate would win by large leads, and the “capitalist corridor” on affluent parts of Manhattan. There, “the Free Press and Wall Street Journal outrank the New York Times” in readership and the majority of electors leaned toward the independent, who ran as a moderate alternative.

Voting Day Trends and Surprises

What was your night?

I had to do that since they were adding approximately 200K ballots into the system frequently! I was actually a little nervous initially: The candidate led the initial ballots by a dozen percentage points, but came two big batches of votes added later and the advantage dropped from 12% to 8%. It was concerning.

Understand, there was a world where yesterday went kind of poorly for him, in which the opponent would have essentially increasing his support from the earlier contest. However Mamdani added 500,000 votes to his initial base, and that’s a huge reason why he won. He went out and massively expanded his support from the primary.

Expanding Support

How did the mayor-elect get those extra votes from?

He built the coalition that the left long aimed for: diverse racially, youthful, it’s renters and it’s people facing cost pressures. He gained considerably with Black and Hispanic voters, everyday New Yorkers, compared to the primary. Plus he further maximized his core of liberal progressives, youthful radicals, and Muslims and south Asians. He couldn’t have won without expanding his appeal.

He built the coalition that progressives long aimed for: multiracial, young, renters and residents struggling with costs

Additionally, there were some supporters of both candidates – is this significant?

It is a real thing, confined to working-class Latinos, Asian communities and Islamic voters. Electors in immigrant strongholds that supported Trump previously backed Zohran this year. But I wouldn’t say he was gaining white working-class voters and Maga voters.

Turnout and Effects

One of the big stories of the election was the sky-high turnout. Who benefited?

Each candidate. Turnout was significantly higher than anticipated. I thought we might go over 2 million, but it reached 2.3 million – that is a huge number of participants. There was a substantial opposition group, energized, but the Mamdani base was equally driven, and that was enough to win.

You forecasted he’d get over 50% of the vote. Is he on course for that?

Right now it appears he’s favored to surpass half. He’s at 50.4% but there’s still probably 200,000 votes uncounted as of Wednesday morning. Thus I don’t think certain, but I think probable, and I hope he achieves it because then none can claim the Republican was a spoiler.

GOP Decline

Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate, is the other big story. His vote completely collapsed.

He didn’t win a single precinct in any borough. Not even Tottenville in Staten Island, which is like an 88% Trump neighborhood. That really was unexpected. The independent held very white areas, very wealthy areas and devout communities, and plus gained many conservatives on Staten Island who had a high participation. I think there was a lot of strategic balloting by the Republicans. This happened before the former president endorsed for Cuomo, but that definitely helped. It might have changed the outcome unless the winning alliance failed to expand.

The “Commie Corridor”

What about your often-discussed “commie corridor” – was support for the candidate overwhelming in those areas of Brooklyn and Queens?

In my view there was a little dilution of the commie corridor in some areas like Astoria or Greenpoint that have older Caucasian residents. There, for example, the Greek landlords and homeowners all went for the independent. Thus there existed some opposition. However no, largely the leftist base is a key factor why Mamdani prevailed – he scored between 77% and 83% in Fort Greene, Clinton Hill and Bushwick.

Community Support

Prior to the election there was coverage on whether Mamdani was gaining ground with the community. Any indication that he did?

There are areas with many secular and more progressive-leaning Jews – such as Park Slope and Morningside Heights – where he performed strongly. However in the wealthy Jewish communities like the Manhattan area, his position on Israel definitely mattered there. Similarly in the more middle-class Jewish areas like Forest Hills, Rego Park, or Spuyten Duyvil and Riverdale – they favored Cuomo. Plus, you have newcomers from the former Soviet Union in southern Brooklyn, they were strongly supportive. So it’s unclear if there were major surprises on this one, but Mamdani retained more progressive Jewish neighborhoods and even parts of the another locale with large leads.

Political Impact

Did Mamdani redefine what New York represents in politics? Will progressive base serve as a springboard for leftwing candidates?

Yes, it’s no coincidence that some of the biggest figures from progressives come from a handful of neighborhoods in the boroughs. I believe that we’ll see more of that – people will come from these neighborhoods to be promoted to higher office.

But I think that each urban center in America can have their own commie corridor. Cities are the epicenters of leftwing power in the nation – since they’re young, tenancy is common and they are places where people are crushed by the inequalities exist.