Zohran Mamdani captured the majority of first-round votes in immigrant neighborhoods in June’s Democratic primary election, according to a new, comprehensive Documented analysis of Election Board and Census Bureau data.
For this analysis, Documented defined immigrant neighborhoods as any areas where more than half of the population was born outside of the U.S. An estimated 122,811 people voted in those areas, 11.4% of the 1.07 million people who voted in the mayoral Democratic primary. Across these areas, Mamdani garnered 6.9% more votes than Cuomo — matching the roughly 7 point lead he took in first round votes across the city on primary election night in June.
Many of these votes came from strong support for Mamdani in NYC’s South Asian enclaves — such as Jackson Heights, Jamaica and Ozone Park — where Mamdani beat Cuomo by over a 60 point margin in some voting districts. Mamdani also outperformed Cuomo in the East Asian communities of Flushing, Sunset Park, and Manhattan’s Two Bridges, while Cuomo won more votes in the Caribbean communities of East Flatbush and the Russian and Central Asian enclaves of South Brooklyn.
While these results only capture the sentiments of voters who are registered as Democrats, they do show that voters in majority immigrant neighborhoods chose a progressive candidate over a moderate one. This comes less than a year after Documented reported a right-ward shift among immigrants during the Presidential elections in 2024, a trend that outlets also observed with immigrants nationwide, including among Latino and Chinese voters.
Mamdani won areas of the city that swung right during the 2024 election, according to the data.
In Sunset Park, Donald Trump made significant gains in 2024 compared to 2020, winning some election districts by over 10 points, according to Board of Elections data. Mamdani won all of the districts that were majority foreign born in that area, according to Documented’s analysis.
Source: Center for Urban Research at the CUNY Graduate Center.
Note, the color ranges show the distribution of the 2020 results:
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- Lightest blue: Election districts where Biden received 63-85% vote share. In 2020, it was statistically still within a reasonable expectation for Trump to receive approximately 37% of the vote share by election district.
- Darkest blues: Election districts where Biden received 85% or more of the vote share and Trump received less than 15%. (The median vote share by election district for then-President Trump was 15%).
- Purple: Election districts where Trump received more than 37% of the vote. This exceeded what was statistically likely for him in 2020, even though Biden won many of them. Election districts in this range (Trump 37-55%, equivalent to Biden 45-63%) were considered “GOP-leaning” by the researchers.
- Light and dark red: Election districts where Trump did especially well, receiving more than 55% of the 2020 vote.
About the Analysis:
To compare election results with demographic patterns, we apportioned votes from election districts to census tracts using an “Area-Weighted Intersection Analysis”. Each election district’s total votes were distributed across the tracts it overlaps, in proportion to the share of the district’s area that falls within each tract. This method ensured that every vote counted once in our analysis, and that tracts partially covered by multiple districts received a fair share of votes based on geography.
Demographic statistics on foreign-born populations came from the American Community Survey’s 2018-2023 estimates, the most recent five-year demographic estimates available from the Census Bureau. Primary election votes by election district came from the NYC Board of Elections.
