The Mamdani Campaign: The Ghost of Kamala HQ’s Past?

Zohran Mamdani speaks at the Resist Fascism Rally in Bryant Park on October 27, 2024. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

On January 1, 2026, Zohran Mamdani was sworn in as the Mayor of New York City. A self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist, Mamdani recently took the world by storm with his landslide upset in the 2025 New York Mayoral election. How exactly did the 33-year-old democratic socialist beat Super-PAC-backed Andrew Cuomo? Many attribute this historic victory to Mamdani’s unique campaign strategy, which heavily utilized social media. 

From gay clubs to subway trains, Mamdani's campaign was a masterclass in mobilizing voters; two million New Yorkers voted in the 2025 mayoral race, the highest turnout since 1969.

The voter turnout for young voters was also notably high for a mayoral election, with 28% of eligible young voters casting a ballot, according to Tuft’s Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. This is a stark increase from the 8% of young eligible voters who voted in the 2013 New York mayoral election, and the 9% average young voter turnout for the 30 largest cities’ mayoral elections.

According to Tuft’s Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, 75% of young voters, or voters aged 18 to 29, voted for Mamdani. 

Mamdani’s social media campaign was, in some ways, similar to other politicians’ usage of these platforms. He received celebrity endorsements, such as Emily Ratajkowski. He made appearances on popular social media channels – including SubwayTakes, which amassed over 6 million views, Are You Okay?, which had over 7.7 million views, and The People Gallery. 

In this way, Mamdani took advantage of TikTok creators who already had large platforms and continuously presented his campaign in different and refreshing ways, reaching young people through the content they were already consuming.

Mamdani also made appearances at clubs around the city, even encouraging voter participation at a PinkPantheress concert. 

However, the most notable catalyst was Mamdani’s own social media platforms. Across X, TikTok, and Instagram, Mamdani amassed over 14 million followers, posting both highly-produced videos and more informal content shot on cell phones. 

Each of these short videos were conceptually distinct in their format; one video posted on Mamdani’s tiktok featured him conducting street interviews outside a Knicks game, another a skit of comedian Jeff Seal searching for Andrew Cuomo while pointing out his negative track record. The next, a video of Mamdani participating in the polar bear plunge while detailing his rent freezing policies.

In an interview with Wired, Mamdani said his social media strategy was to be “consistent with our message but continue to reinvent our medium;” highlighting the intentional nature of these varying video formats.

Mamdani said his team could have continued with only man-on-the-street interviews after their initial success, but they continuously strived to be innovative in their content, to which Mamdani attributed much of his social media success. 

However, Mamdani isn’t the first democrat in a high-profile race to use these strategies. Before Mamdani was filming TikToks with Gen Z pop culture icons, Kamala Harris’ 2024 presidential campaign employed these social media-heavy, Gen-Z-focused campaign tactics. 

Yet while Harris' loss to Donald Trump symbolized a significant failure for the Democratic Party, the Mamdani campaign followed the same digital playbook to immense success. 

So what led one social media campaign to fail, and the other to achieve great success?

The failure of Harris and the success of Mamdani were, of course, affected by a wide array of circumstantial factors, and Mamdani was notably running for office in a democratic state, not a polarized nation. Nevertheless, in terms of New York voters, it seems wherever Harris failed, Mamdani excelled.

Mamdani was able to garner support from several voter blocs where Harris floundered; according to a CBS News Voter Poll, 15% of Mamdani's voters didn't vote for Harris. Of those Mamdani voters who did not support Harris, 5% preferred Donald Trump, 3% voted for a third-party candidate, and 6% didn't vote in the presidential election.

According to the same CBS News Voter Poll, “Mamdani-not-Harris voters” were younger, less affluent, less liberal, and more diverse than Mamdani voters who also voted for Harris. 

Mamdani was also able to gain support from previous Trump voters, flipping 10% of 2024 Trump voters across the city. The Mamdani-not-Harris voters also identified as liberal at lower rates. These voters likely prioritized economic issues over ideology. 

Notably, the position of Israel was more salient to Mamdani-not-Harris voters. Mamdani’s stance against Israel’s actions in Gaza was frequently questioned during the course of the election, but may have worked out in his favor amongst young progressive voters. This reflects the increasing weight of this issue for many young voters, who may have refrained from voting for Harris due to her stance on Gaza. 

While the Israel-Gaza war has been polarizing within the Democratic Party and across partisan lines, young Americans oppose US involvement in this conflict more than older Americans. According to a 2024 Pew Research Poll, only 16% of adults under 30 favor the U.S. providing military aid to Israel to help in its war against Hamas, while 56% adults 65 and older support this aid.

One key difference in the two social media-focused campaigns is the substantial policy rhetoric behind them. Harris’ Brat-themed KamalaHQ account clearly displayed a strong understanding of social media trends, but failed to convey messages about Harris’ specific policies.

 In contrast, Zohran’s short-form media all presented a common problem facing many New Yorkers, and then highlighted specific policies Mamdani would use to fix this problem.  

Jonathan Nagler, a politics professor at New York University and the co-director of its Center for Social Media and Politics, said that young Mamdani voters were influenced not by “some cute thing on social media,” but rather “because they learned something on social media about policies he had that mattered to them.”

Mamdani said this shift in political usage of social media was a conscious goal. He told Wired that AOC’s campaign launch video inspired him to have a video to “distill his politics” and campaign, but he then expanded this model, utilizing social media videos for legislative advocacy.

He said this tactic was rooted in “taking issues that would previously only be of the concern of those pre-existingly plugged into the politics of the city, and making it of far larger interest.” 

Further, this approach to political social media showed young voters that Mamdani took them seriously and understood that they had substantial concerns.

Mamdani said he aimed to “treat these forms of media with the seriousness and legitimacy that they deserve,” noting that one cannot “divorce the political approach to social media from the political approach to young people,” because there is a “condescension about both the medium and the people themselves.”

By lacking policy and substance, Harris’ social media strategy contributed to this “condescension.”

Mamdani treated “young people as you would anyone else, with the same concerns, the same stakes, the same consequences.” He said that “if you prepped for the Instagram video the same way you would for a print media interview, you’ll see that there is the possibility of reaching far more people.”

From the beginning of his campaign, Mamdani’s heavy utilization of social media to convey policy goals showed he treated it as an important form of political communication, and by extension, showed he viewed young voters with a high level of respect. 

The difference in their success illustrates a key failure of many members of the Democratic Party; they vie for the young vote, yet possess a surface-level understanding of the needs, struggles, and wants of this group.

For political candidates, social media is a mechanism for sharing a strong platform, in tune with the needs of voters. A strong social media presence without such a platform has proven to hold little weight in mobilizing voters. 

The success of Mamdani’s campaign could lead to a broader shift in the way politicians communicate with potential voters. Copycat candidates from both parties will likely take to the streets with a microphone in hand following Mamdani’s victory. Thus, they have a unique opportunity to engage with young voters and mobilize voter blocs if they learn from the failures of lime green KamalaHQ and their Coconut Tree memes. 

Further, KamalaHQ recently relaunched their TikTok account, rebranding themselves as Headquarters. With a new name and branding, this account may aim to learn from its shortcomings.