The events, Mamdani continued, are “intergenerational moments,” where “people of all ages can come and can enjoy themselves” — a welcome opportunity for a generation perhaps defined by its difficulty in forming community offline, lacking access to IRL “third spaces.”
Those events are a complement to the campaign’s extremely robust canvassing operation. Mamdani ticked off the statistics in rapid-fire: 52,000 volunteers knocking on 1.6 million doors and making 2.1 million phone calls during the primary; today, he claimed, some 90,000 volunteers.
But, he said, it’s not just the numbers. “I think what gets lost in some of the statistics is the stories of friends that have been made, of communities that have been formed,” Mamdani noted. Some of those relationships have been, to his earlier point, intergenerational.
Mamdani’s mother, for instance, has been canvassing for him — and “at one point, she had a regular 25- [or] 26-year-old canvassing buddy that she would complain walked too fast,” he said with a laugh. “Even today, you know, she called me, like, ‘Which poll is right? Which one should we be looking at? Should we be nervous? How should we feel?’” Mamdani ended the conversation as he “always [does], no matter who [he’s] speaking to”: by emphasizing the importance of canvassing itself.
“The best way to deal with any of our anxiety about the elections, the best way to actually understand how to respond to any one poll is to go out there and understand that it’s New Yorkers who are going to determine this election,” Mamdani told Teen Vogue. “It’s New Yorkers who we can speak to at the doors.”
Polling indicates that, for young people, this approach seems to be working. ABC News and the Harvard Institute of Politics’ focus group consisted of voters age 22 to 29 from four of the five boroughs. Two participants now supporting Mamdani had voted for Trump, defying the antagonistic relationship between the mayoral candidate and the president. All of the participants brought up Mamdani’s prioritization of affordability — a focus when at the doors with his canvassing operation — with others citing his position on Israel and, what ABC News described as, his “anti-establishment” campaign.
