“Anti-Trump surge voters will shape the outcome of elections, as long as President Trump is in office.”
Throughout the 2025 Democratic mayoral primary, political observers were stunned by the rise of Queens Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani’s momentum. As early as February 2025, we wrote in Crain’s New York Business about Mamdani “surging in political support”, which built on our analysis published years earlier about the power of “surge voters” in primary elections. These “surge” voters, mobilized today by anti-Trump sentiment and a focus on pocketbook issues, continue to reshape politics at every level of electoral politics. Campaigns that successfully identify and activate these surge voters will often prevail in key races over the next several years. In New York City, many of these voters were highly motivated to organize and vote because of the current affordability crisis, the subject of our most recent 5 Borough Barometer survey.
