Early voting has appeared to skew towards older voters and Andrew Cuomo has gained in the NYC mayoral polls, making youth turnout key for Mamdani.

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Candidates for New York mayor face off in final debate

Andrew Cuomo, Zohran Mamdani, and Curtis Sliwa clashed over Trump, housing, crime, and sexual harassment claims.

NEW YORK − Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, knows young people propelled his rise to the top of the polls, he told USA TODAY on Oct. 31.

“Younger voters are, in many ways, at the heart of this campaign and where we are in this moment,” Mamdani said over the phone. “These are not just the voters who have come out to vote for us at unprecedented levels. They’re also the very New Yorkers who’ve been knocking on doors across the five boroughs.”

Amid early voting numbers appearing to skew older ahead of the Nov. 4 election, Mamdani, the 34-year-old democratic socialist state lawmaker, needs Gen Z and millennial New Yorkers to maintain his lead against former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has narrowed a double-digit gap polling gap in the closing days of the race.

Mamdani’s June primary victory upset against Cuomo, 67, came with strong enthusiasm among the young, who resonated with his focus on addressing affordability in the nation’s largest city. Older people have leaned more toward Cuomo, and older voters are more likely to vote in off-year elections.

But Mamdani looks to his younger supporters who have engaged parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles about his campaign.

“I’ve heard this again and again from older New Yorkers,” he said. “It was a younger family member who came up to them and first made the case about why it was time for a change. And I just so appreciate these younger voters, because again and again, while they’ve been spoken to with such condescension in our politics, they’ve shown that they can, in fact, be at the heart of a new kind of politics that puts working people at the heart of it.”

Even as he’s urged voters not to get complacent, Mamdani said he’s excited by increases in overall turnout.

“We’re always a stronger democracy when more people participate,” Mamdani said. “What we’ve sought to show is that the strength of that democracy can also be assessed from its ability to actually deliver on the material needs of working people.”

Cuomo’s campaign didn’t respond to an email request for comment about outreach to young voters.

Appeal with younger Muslim voters

Mamdani’s to younger voters has resonated in particular in immigrant enclaves, especially in fast-growing Muslim and South Asian communities. Youth-heavy immigration has come about amid increases in cost of living, according to a recent city Comptroller’s Office analysis.

“He’s gone through all the things we go through,” Yusra Irfan, 36, a social adult day care worker, said of Mamdani while outside of a Friday jummah congregational prayer the candidate attended at the Muslim American Society Youth Center, in Brooklyn. “He experienced the same difficulties that we experience.” 

Irfan and others handed out campaign materials in English and Arabic to scores of people leaving the mosque. A campaign effort to engage Muslim New Yorkers resulted in the campaign canvassing 210 of around 300 mosques in the city, a spokesperson said.

Irfan began volunteering on his campaign after seeing Mamdani on TikTok. It’s her first time voting for mayor since moving from India a decade ago, and she was excited about the first Muslim mayor and first Indian mayor. But as a single mother, Irfan appreciated Mamdani’s platform to address costs in the city, especially on his pledge for universal child care.

Asad Dandia, a New York