NYC Mayoral Poll - Highlights

24 Oct, 2025

Our aim is to give people working for change access to the best data. Consistent with that, we wanted to trial a research method that has shown promising results in other spaces, but hasn’t been applied extensively to social impact work: social-circle surveying. Instead of asking people directly the things that they prefer, you ask them about what they think their community prefers. This approach has been shown to have the potential to reduce bias and increase coverage, even with smaller sample sizes.

In addition, we wanted to explore ways to make the most of rich survey data—averages only reveal so much. So we asked people to respond on a scale of 0 to 100, and then we used the responses to develop visualizations, which show not just how common support is for something, but whether that support is polarized, all over the place, or shows consensus. These insights can help organizations identify the policy solutions that don’t just have majority support (which can still be divided), but the solutions that people believe have support across their entire community and thus are the most likely to stick.

With these two goals in mind, in partnership with Early Studies, we surveyed 1,099 registered voters in New York from October 6 to 13 and asked them a range of questions about the policies and candidates in the upcoming mayoral race.

Below are the highlights of what we found. You can find the full results of the study here.

1. Looking only at the averages for certain policies hides big differences between groups.

• From our question on gender affirming care, we see different distributions of community support with similar averages, including polarization from Republicans and more divided support from women. ↓
• From our question on a millionaire tax, women respondents perceive universal or near-universal support in their communities, but men respondents reported more divided support, despite averages from the two groups being nearly identical. ↓.

2. The Mamdani campaign's focus on affordability appears to be justified by perceived policy support. ↓

• Our survey respondents reported high support for the campaign's affordability-related policies in their communities, with large shares of respondents reporting universal or near-universal support. ↓
• Respondents reported disperse or divided support on social housing and city-run grocery stores when compared to other affordability related policies (rent freeze, free buses, $30 minimum wage, universal childcare). ↓
• On other policies from the Mamdani campaign, respondents reported more disperse or divided support, though respondents' reported levels of support for a millionaire tax in their communities were similar to the campaign's affordability-related policies. ↓

Gender Affirming Care by Group

On the question:

On a scale of 0-100, what proportion of your community would support...

Gender Affirming Care - Invest $65 million in public health care providers to provide gender-affirming care to New Yorkers who seek it.

The average community support does not differ greatly between groups, but the distributions do.

For example:

• We can see evidence of polarization among Republican respondents, with a peak of respondents saying no-one or nearly no-one supports investment in gender affirming care, and another peak of more divided perceived support.
• Women respondents perceive less support in their communities for public spending on gender affirming care, with both a disperse distribution and the lowest average among respondent groups.

Men and Women on Millionaire Tax

On the question:

On a scale of 0-100, what proportion of your community would support...

Millionaire Tax - Implementing a 2% tax on all income over $1 million annually

The average of community support from men and women respondents is the same, but the distributions are very different.

A large share of women respondents perceive universal or near-universal support in their communities, but men respondents see more divided support. This could mean that more women perceive social consensus on a millionaire tax than men.

Mamdani Campaign and Affordability

The performance of the Mamdani campaign in the primary election and in recent polling has been extensively discussed in the media, with many commentators speculating on the factors driving its success.

The poll included twelve policies from the Mamdani campaign, six of which are more affordability-related¹, and six of which are less affordability-related².

Four high-support policies

Four of the six affordability-related policies have similar averages and distributions:

Reported community support is clustered towards the right, peaking at 100, meaning that a large share of respondents believe that there is universal or near-universal support for these policies in their communities.

Two affordability outliers

Two of the affordability-related policies stand out from the other four.

The peak of support for these two policies is shifted to the left and the distributions are more disperse, meaning fewer respondents reported universal or near-universal support for them communities and more reported lower levels of support.³

A couple points:

• Of the six affordability-related policies, city-run grocery stores performed the worst, with a substantial share of respondents perceiving less than a majority of their communities supporting the policy.
• Comparing the social housing policy to freezing rent, from the first set, is interesting. The average community support of the two are similar (70 and 68, respectively), but the distribution for social housing is shifted left and is more disperse, showing less social consensus.

Other Mamdani policies

The remaining policies from the Mamdani campaign, which are less affordability-related:

Compared to the affordability-related policies, community support is generally shifted to the left, meaning a smaller share of respondents perceive universal or near-universal support for these policies and more perceive lower levels or more divided of support.

A few points stand out:

• The distribution (and average) of a millionaire tax is similar to the best performing affordability-related policies.⁴
• The distributions of support for gender affirming care and immigration protections, relative to all other policies in the Mamdani set, are more disperse, and more respondents perceived them to have less than majority support in their communities.
• Public spending on gender affirming care performs the worst of all of the policies in the Mamdani set, when measured by respondents' perception of support in their communities.

Taken as a whole, the Mamdani campaign's reported prioritization of affordability appears to be grounded in a set of policies that have very high-levels of support in respondents' communities, which could be interpreted as a social consensus for government action on the issue and for these policies in particular, and in turn be a factor contributing to the success of the Mamdani campaign to date.

About

Athena Insights is a nonprofit that uses the best market research tools to uncover the most persuasive narrative strategies, and gives them away for free. We believe that progress on the world’s most urgent challenges is stalling not because solutions don’t exist—but because the narratives around them fail to inspire and unite. Our mission is to democratize access to world-class narrative research. We deploy the same sophisticated market research methods that built global brands—and make the insights available for free to organizations working for a better future. By revealing what truly resonates across diverse audiences, we help nonprofits, academics and campaigners craft messages that build broad coalitions instead of deepening divides. More →.