How Zohran’s Campaign Won the Feed and the Vote

5 key learnings on how the socialist underdog upset a political dynasty

Do you feel that? Yeah, feels like fucking hope to me.

I’m writing this less than 12 hours after Cuomo conceded to Zohran Mamdani in the Democratic mayoral primary – the biggest “upset” that legacy Dems didn’t see coming.

Here are the five learnings I find most compelling behind Zohran’s winning campaign strategy.

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Clear, concise, consistent messaging that appeals to the working class wins.

In most recent years, Democrats have struggled with landing on clear messaging that makes sense to the average person. Maybe it’s a mix of feeling the need to caveat-caveat-caveat, being too sheepish to make a strong statement on specific issues and consequently cowering to the middle, or that they’re too full of lifetime politician campaign strategists that they don’t realize their language makes no sense outside of DC walls.

Zohran’s primary message was clear: A New York you can afford. He drove home four main issues in support of an affordable New York: free buses, free childcare, a rent freeze, and cheaper groceries. It’s not caveated, it’s not sheepish, and it’s not full of political jargon. It’s clear and appealing to real problems that the working class face.

Investing in social media, creators, and the online communities where your messaging will land is a winning strategy. His social team made backing Zohran feel cool.

Zohran broke 1M followers on Instagram last night. From the jump, he invested in his social – coming out with videos multiple times a week speaking directly to camera about the issues he was running on. He used social media to meet young people where they are: on their phones. Sorry oldies, no young person is watching your cheesy TV commercials. We don’t even have cable.

I can hear the counter-argument now: but Kamala was huge on social, and she didn’t win! That’s true, but her team was riding on meme-culture and Brat summer without clearly communicating the issues she was running on. People thought it was funny, but it didn’t make them care enough to get out the vote. That’s the difference: Zohran used social to spread his campaign messaging in a way that regular people could easily understand — not as a way to chase trends and cross his fingers.

Another key difference of Zohran vs Kamala’s social strategy is that he collaborated with key, niche creators — and in his case, that meant tapping into the New York influence bubble. Kamala did one Call Her Daddy podcast episode – a largely female audience that I’m guessing is a 50/50 split between conservative and liberal – with just one week or so until Election Day (a shit Hail Mary if you ask me). Zohran went on every cool-New Yorker-internet-show: Subway Takes, Isaac “I Like You!” Hindin-Miller’s Best of NYC series, Throwing Fits pod, Keep the Meter Running – the list goes on, and he started doing it months ago. Collaborating with these niche yet influential online communities allowed Zohran to be extremely targeted in who he was reaching. At the agency where I work, this is a strategy we’ve coined as “Influence Mapping,” which I explain in this video. The general concept is that you map out the key players (influencers) within a very specific niche (whether that be location, target audience, interests, etc.) and then you go hard saturating that specific corner of the internet.

This leads me to my next point: endorsing Zohran became cool. Kareem’s coolness is undeniable. Mary Beth Barone is fucking hilarious, smart, and has a cult-following of hot girls in New York who will do just about anything she says (myself included). This then trickled into other creators endorsing Zohran without even collaborating with him – for example, Halley Kate (1.5M followers) endorsing Zohran in a TikTok video that has over 400K views (and might I add – Halley posted this video, and then 12 hours later the first poll ever showing Zohran leading over Cuomo came out… I’m just saying…). None of these creators I’ve mentioned are specifically political – they play within the lifestyle, entertainment, and comedy sectors of the New York internet. That way, he broke out of blue-pilled algorithms and reached unlikely voters that were receptive to his policies.

All of these factors are a huge reason why young voters showed up in numbers we’ve never seen before. For the first time ever (at least in recent history), the 25-34 age group had the highest votes during the early voting period.

The people cannot be bought. The power is in the people.

Zohran was up against Cuomo’s $25M super PAC – the largest super PAC ever created in a New York City mayoral campaign – largely funded by billionaires and corporations. On the contrary, Zohran’s campaign heavily relied on individual contributions (regular people like you and me) and qualifying for public matching funds. Zohran received somewhere around 19,000 individual contributions, with an average donation size of $78 (the smallest average out of any other candidates).

How lovely is it that a grassroots campaign beat a billionaire-bankrolled campaign? All power to the people. We cannot be bought when we are motivated.

Human-first, IRL campaigning still rules.

In addition to donations, Zohran supporters showed up in big ways to canvass – with over 50,000 individual volunteers. I myself was a Zohran volunteer! They incentivized canvassing in a few key ways: instead of selling Zohran merch, they made it free but only available to those who canvassed; they hosted phone banking parties with of-the-moment New York icons like Cole Escola, Cynthia Nixon, Sarah Sherman, and Hari Nef.

Furthermore! Zohran was outside meeting with real New Yorkers all. the. damn. time. He would often hit all five boroughs in one day. He engrained himself in communities that felt they’d been left behind, and gave them hope again for a mayor who would alleviate the skyrocketing cost-of-living. He came out at an MJ Lenderman concert at the Brooklyn Steel. Mary Beth Barone interviewed him on stage at one of her comedy shows at the Bell House.

Let this be a come-to-Jesus moment for Establishment Democrats: backing centrist candidates is why you keep fucking losing. Progressive candidates can and will win.

If Democrats are addicted to losing, then sure – keep investing in moderate candidates. But if Democrats want to start winning again, take this as a lesson: progressive candidates win. Progressive messaging motivates and energizes young people to vote. Progressive issues appeal to the working class.

Happy post-Election day to you all. See you in the Fall to vote for Zohran again in November. I’ll be libbing out today until further notice.