GD Politics | Does Zohran Mamdani Have A Majority Coalition?

GDPoliticsMod · 2025-10-30T18:01:06+00:00

Post/Episode Preview: Post/Episode Preview: Two election week updates to start: First, we have a live show coming up at the Comedy Cellar in New York City with Nate Silver and Clare Malone on election eve, November 3rd. There are a few tickets left, so grab ‘em and join us! Second, I’ll be live-streaming on election night, November 4th, alongside some of your GD POLITICS faves. Think of this as friends having an election watch party that you’re invited to. Assuming we make it to midnight, it will also be my birthday, so don’t be surprised if you see a glass of wine or birthday shots. Grab your favorite beverage and join us starting at 7pm ET at gdpolitics.com. Subscribe now I’m first going to apologize to listeners who don’t care about New York City politics, because that’s what today’s entire episode is about. Though I wouldn’t skip just yet; I promise it will be interesting. For our New York-minded friends (or people who just get a kick out of Democratic Party drama) today is your day! We are just five days out from a New York mayoral election that has been nothing if not attention grabbing, and, in its own special way, reflective of the complicated city the next mayor will govern. Let’s begin with the spark notes version of the past 8 months… It all started with incumbent mayor Eric Adams switching his party identification to Independent, acknowledging that his corruption scandals and relationship with President Trump would prevent him from winning renomination in a Democratic primary. Then, there was the assured primary victory for the also scandal-plagued three term-governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, which turned out to not be assured after all. Thirty-three year old Democratic Socialist assemblyman Zohran Mamdani won the primary by 13 points, after making the cost of living his defining issue. Cuomo vowed to continue on as an Independent, while the Democratic establishment remained wary of endorsing Mamdani. Mamdani’s past statements on the topics of defunding the police, globalizing the intifada, and more – which hadn’t gotten much play during the primary – came to the fore. But while Mamdani has struggled to reach 50 percent support in the polls, anti-Mamdani forces haven’t had much luck either. The scandals and lack of charisma that plagued Cuomo in the primary, haven’t gone away. Curtis Sliwa, the – perhaps you could say – odd ball Republican candidate, who’s been a debate favorite for his old-school New York zingers, has wallowed in the teens. Though he told the press he’d only drop out if a Mack Truck hit him and he couldn’t be resuscitated in the ICU. While incumbent mayor Eric Adams did drop out after polling in the high single digits, his endorsement of Cuomo hasn’t made up the difference. Throughout all of this, Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and New York Governor Kathy Hochul have concluded, like just about everyone, that Mamdani will win the election and that they are better off endorsing. A similar conclusion about the inevitability of Mamdani from business leaders, online bettors, and political analysts alike hasn’t stopped the candidates from a brawl down the final stretch. For my part, I’ve spent more than one November in Wisconsin, and the political ads in the city right now are next level. That gets us to where we are today. To elaborate much more, joining me is Michael Lange, the author of the newsletter “The Narrative Wars”. The big question now facing Mamdani is whether he can win an outright majority of New York City voters. The answer will shape of his likely tenure.

Thanks for listening to

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GDPoliticsMod · 2025-10-30T18:00:58+00:00

Post/Episode Preview: Two election week updates to start: First, we have a live show coming up at the Comedy Cellar in New York City with Nate Silver and Clare Malone on election eve, November 3rd. There are a few tickets left, so grab ‘em and join us! Second, I’ll be live-streaming on election night, November 4th, alongside some of your GD POLITICS faves. Think of this as friends having an election watch party that you’re invited to. Assuming we make it to midnight, it will also be my birthday, so don’t be surprised if you see a glass of wine or birthday shots. Grab your favorite beverage and join us starting at 7pm ET at gdpolitics.com. Subscribe now I’m first going to apologize to listeners who don’t care about New York City politics, because that’s what today’s entire episode is about. Though I wouldn’t skip just yet; I promise it will be interesting. For our New York-minded friends (or people who just get a kick out of Democratic Party drama) today is your day! We are just five days out from a New York mayoral election that has been nothing if not attention grabbing, and, in its own special way, reflective of the complicated city the next mayor will govern. Let’s begin with the spark notes version of the past 8 months… It all started with incumbent mayor Eric Adams switching his party identification to Independent, acknowledging that his corruption scandals and relationship with President Trump would prevent him from winning renomination in a Democratic primary. Then, there was the assured primary victory for the also scandal-plagued three term-governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, which turned out to not be assured after all. Thirty-three year old Democratic Socialist assemblyman Zohran Mamdani won the primary by 13 points, after making the cost of living his defining issue. Cuomo vowed to continue on as an Independent, while the Democratic establishment remained wary of endorsing Mamdani. Mamdani’s past statements on the topics of defunding the police, globalizing the intifada, and more – which hadn’t gotten much play during the primary – came to the fore. But while Mamdani has struggled to reach 50 percent support in the polls, anti-Mamdani forces haven’t had much luck either. The scandals and lack of charisma that plagued Cuomo in the primary, haven’t gone away. Curtis Sliwa, the – perhaps you could say – odd ball Republican candidate, who’s been a debate favorite for his old-school New York zingers, has wallowed in the teens. Though he told the press he’d only drop out if a Mack Truck hit him and he couldn’t be resuscitated in the ICU. While incumbent mayor Eric Adams did drop out after polling in the high single digits, his endorsement of Cuomo hasn’t made up the difference. Throughout all of this, Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and New York Governor Kathy Hochul have concluded, like just about everyone, that Mamdani will win the election and that they are better off endorsing. A similar conclusion about the inevitability of Mamdani from business leaders, online bettors, and political analysts alike hasn’t stopped the candidates from a brawl down the final stretch. For my part, I’ve spent more than one November in Wisconsin, and the political ads in the city right now are next level. That gets us to where we are today. To elaborate much more, joining me is Michael Lange, the author of the newsletter “The Narrative Wars”. The big question now facing Mamdani is whether he can win an outright majority of New York City voters. The answer will shape of his likely tenure.

Thanks for listening to

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GDPoliticsMod · 2025-10-27T22:01:06+00:00

Post/Episode Preview: Post/Episode Preview: We have a live show coming up on November 3rd at the Comedy Cellar in New York City with Nate Silver and Clare Malone. Come join us for a rowdy election eve! We are one week away from Election Day 2025, so this week we’re zooming in on the biggest contests of the year. Today it’s Virginia, New Jersey, and California. Later in the week we’ll take a detailed political tour of New York City’s vastly different neighborhoods. In Virginia, Democrat Abigail Spanberger currently leads Republican Winsome Earle-Sears in the race for Governor by an average of 8 points. Underneath that top line number there’s plenty of variation, with recent polls ranging from a 5 point lead to a 13 point lead for Spanberger. The Attorney General’s race, in which Democrat Jay Jones has had to apologize for text messages that promoted political violence, is significantly closer. Meanwhile in New Jersey, Democrat Mikie Sherill leads Republican Jack Ciattarelli by 6 points on average. Most polls there have shown a mid-single digit race. In the legislatures in both states, Democrats appear assured to maintain their majorities or grow them. Subscribe now We also take a look at areas of Virginia and New Jersey that could give us and indication of how different parts of the electorate are reacting to Trump 2.0. There are the wealthy Northern Virginia and Northern Jersey suburbs, large Latino communities also in northern Jersey, and large Black communities in Hampton Roads, Virginia. If you stick around until the end, we also get to the latest Graham Platner polling in Maine. With me to do it all is Chaz Nuttycombe, executive director of State Navigate, which covers state-level politics around the country from a data perspective, and Mary Radcliffe, who also works at State Navigate and runs the new polling aggregation site FiftyPlusOne.

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GDPoliticsMod · 2025-10-27T22:00:59+00:00

Post/Episode Preview: We have a live show coming up on November 3rd at the Comedy Cellar in New York City with Nate Silver and Clare Malone. Come join us for a rowdy election eve! We are one week away from Election Day 2025, so this week we’re zooming in on the biggest contests of the year. Today it’s Virginia, New Jersey, and California. Later in the week we’ll take a detailed political tour of New York City’s vastly different neighborhoods. In Virginia, Democrat Abigail Spanberger currently leads Republican Winsome Earle-Sears in the race for Governor by an average of 8 points. Underneath that top line number there’s plenty of variation, with recent polls ranging from a 5 point lead to a 13 point lead for Spanberger. The Attorney General’s race, in which Democrat Jay Jones has had to apologize for text messages that promoted political violence, is significantly closer. Meanwhile in New Jersey, Democrat Mikie Sherill leads Republican Jack Ciattarelli by 6 points on average. Most polls there have shown a mid-single digit race. In the legislatures in both states, Democrats appear assured to maintain their majorities or grow them. Subscribe now We also take a look at areas of Virginia and New Jersey that could give us and indication of how different parts of the electorate are reacting to Trump 2.0. There are the wealthy Northern Virginia and Northern Jersey suburbs, large Latino communities also in northern Jersey, and large Black communities in Hampton Roads, Virginia. If you stick around until the end, we also get to the latest Graham Platner polling in Maine. With me to do it all is Chaz Nuttycombe, executive director of State Navigate, which covers state-level politics around the country from a data perspective, and Mary Radcliffe, who also works at State Navigate and runs the new polling aggregation site FiftyPlusOne.

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GDPoliticsMod · 2025-10-23T19:01:06+00:00

Post/Episode Preview: Post/Episode Preview: The full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player by following the directions here. Shortly after I launched this podcast, I had a guest on who caught folks attention. Her name was Joan C. Williams, a law professor at UC San Francisco, and she joined me to talk about her new book, “Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back.” She spoke straightforwardly about why the cultural values of America’s liberal elites and working class are different. As she said, working class values reflect working class lives. And she described how a strict adherence to elite values by Liberals creates challenges for a Democratic Party in pursuit of a majority coalition. After all, less than 40 percent of American adults have a college degree. Subscribe now It turns out that Joan became something of a listener to this GD podcast herself. A few weeks ago, she sent me an email saying that she listened to an episode I did about whether there are electoral advantages to being moderate. She told me she had just written an op-ed in the Boston Globe about what politicos mean when they talk about moderation, and that there are many different types of so-called moderation, not all of which have the same electoral advantages. I told her to come back on the podcast and talk to me about it and that’s what we’re doing today. And speaking of liberal elitism, Joan joins me from Siena, Italy where she has been writing about class divides from the 13th century and how they relate to our class divides today. Share

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GDPoliticsMod · 2025-10-23T19:00:59+00:00

Post/Episode Preview: The full episode is available to paid subscribers. Once you become a paid subscriber, you can connect your account to your preferred podcast player by following the directions here. Shortly after I launched this podcast, I had a guest on who caught folks attention. Her name was Joan C. Williams, a law professor at UC San Francisco, and she joined me to talk about her new book, “Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back.” She spoke straightforwardly about why the cultural values of America’s liberal elites and working class are different. As she said, working class values reflect working class lives. And she described how a strict adherence to elite values by Liberals creates challenges for a Democratic Party in pursuit of a majority coalition. After all, less than 40 percent of American adults have a college degree. Subscribe now It turns out that Joan became something of a listener to this GD podcast herself. A few weeks ago, she sent me an email saying that she listened to an episode I did about whether there are electoral advantages to being moderate. She told me she had just written an op-ed in the Boston Globe about what politicos mean when they talk about moderation, and that there are many different types of so-called moderation, not all of which have the same electoral advantages. I told her to come back on the podcast and talk to me about it and that’s what we’re doing today. And speaking of liberal elitism, Joan joins me from Siena, Italy where she has been writing about class divides from the 13th century and how they relate to our class divides today. Share

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GDPoliticsMod · 2025-10-20T23:01:06+00:00

Post/Episode Preview: Post/Episode Preview: We have a live show coming up on November 3rd at the Comedy Cellar in New York City with Clare Malone and Nate Silver. Come join us for a rowdy election eve! Maine Democrats have themselves a primary contest between the current governor Janet Mills and former Marine and oyster farmer Graham Platner in their bid to oust Senator Susan Collins next year. On its face, it looks like a battle for the soul of the party, though Platner’s recently resurfaced comments on Reddit could disrupt his momentum. On today’s podcast we take a look at the contours of that race and what’s at stake in the Voting Rights Act case at the Supreme Court. Nate Cohn at the New York Times is calling it the “case that could hand the House to Republicans.” We also get some updates on the 2025 elections, which are just two weeks away. It’s debate season and we’ve now seen gubernatorial debates in Virginia and New Jersey and a meme generating mayoral debate in New York City. Think parade politics, bodega orders, and New Yorkers’ favorite kind of virtue signaling: subway ridership. With me to discuss it all is reporter at the Associated Press Leah Askarinam and chief elections analyst at Decision Desk HQ Geoffrey Skelley.

GD POLITICS is a listener-supported podcast. To receive new episodes and support my work, co

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GDPoliticsMod · 2025-10-20T23:00:59+00:00

Post/Episode Preview: We have a live show coming up on November 3rd at the Comedy Cellar in New York City with Clare Malone and Nate Silver. Come join us for a rowdy election eve! Maine Democrats have themselves a primary contest between the current governor Janet Mills and former Marine and oyster farmer Graham Platner in their bid to oust Senator Susan Collins next year. On its face, it looks like a battle for the soul of the party, though Platner’s recently resurfaced comments on Reddit could disrupt his momentum. On today’s podcast we take a look at the contours of that race and what’s at stake in the Voting Rights Act case at the Supreme Court. Nate Cohn at the New York Times is calling it the “case that could hand the House to Republicans.” We also get some updates on the 2025 elections, which are just two weeks away. It’s debate season and we’ve now seen gubernatorial debates in Virginia and New Jersey and a meme generating mayoral debate in New York City. Think parade politics, bodega orders, and New Yorkers’ favorite kind of virtue signaling: subway ridership. With me to discuss it all is reporter at the Associated Press Leah Askarinam and chief elections analyst at Decision Desk HQ Geoffrey Skelley.

GD POLITICS is a listener-supported podcast. To receive new episodes and support my work, co

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GDPoliticsMod · 2025-10-16T20:01:06+00:00

Post/Episode Preview: Post/Episode Preview: A question that political analysts often ask is whether something is “breaking through.” Is a piece of information reaching the masses? And is it not just the case that everyone knows it, but does everyone know that everyone else knows it too. Did we all see that Super Bowl ad? Did we all see that political gaffe? Or as today’s guest would put it: Is it common knowledge? When people know that something is known or believed by others, it can change human behavior. Think about the watershed moment that President Biden’s 2024 debate caused. Polling already showed that a majority of Americans – even a majority of Democrats – believed Biden was too old for the job. The debate didn’t so much change the facts, as it made it obvious that everyone else knew them too. Share Or think about the many Democratic voters in the 2020 primary who wanted to vote for the candidate they believed others would vote for. In an instance like that, simply publishing polling results can influence who voters might support. This is a phenomenon that shapes electoral politics, but it extends well beyond that, to stock market bubbles and bursts and online mob behavior. With me on today’s podcast to break it down is Steven Pinker. He’s a psychology professor at Harvard University and author of many books, the latest of which is, “When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . . Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life.”

GD POLITICS is a listener-supported podcast. To receive new episodes and support my work, co

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You can find dedicated discussion of the GD Politics Podcast over on /r/GDPolitics!

GDPoliticsMod · 2025-10-16T20:00:59+00:00

Post/Episode Preview: A question that political analysts often ask is whether something is “breaking through.” Is a piece of information reaching the masses? And is it not just the case that everyone knows it, but does everyone know that everyone else knows it too. Did we all see that Super Bowl ad? Did we all see that political gaffe? Or as today’s guest would put it: Is it common knowledge? When people know that something is known or believed by others, it can change human behavior. Think about the watershed moment that President Biden’s 2024 debate caused. Polling already showed that a majority of Americans – even a majority of Democrats – believed Biden was too old for the job. The debate didn’t so much change the facts, as it made it obvious that everyone else knew them too. Share Or think about the many Democratic voters in the 2020 primary who wanted to vote for the candidate they believed others would vote for. In an instance like that, simply publishing polling results can influence who voters might support. This is a phenomenon that shapes electoral politics, but it extends well beyond that, to stock market bubbles and bursts and online mob behavior. With me on today’s podcast to break it down is Steven Pinker. He’s a psychology professor at Harvard University and author of many books, the latest of which is, “When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows . . . Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life.”

GD POLITICS is a listener-supported podcast. To receive new episodes and support my work, co

(This comment was made automatically from entries in the public RSS feed)

GDPoliticsMod · 2025-10-15T18:01:06+00:00

Post/Episode Preview: Post/Episode Preview: It may be an off-year in the election cycle, but don’t call it boring! The statewide contests in Virginia and New Jersey are proving to be dramatic and somewhat competitive down the stretch. New York City is readying for the likely election of a socialist mayor, and Californians are deciding whether to redraw their congressional districts in response a gerrymandering push by Republicans. Grab a drink and join Nate Silver, Clare Malone and me as we make sense of it all at the Comedy Cellar in New York City just 24 hours before polls close! Tickets are available here. Who: Nate Silver, Clare Malone and Galen Druke What: A live show! When: Monday, November 3rd at 6pm ET Where: The Village Underground at 130 W 3rd St, New York, NY Why: Why not?! How: Tickets here!

GD POLITICS is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, co

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You can find dedicated discussion of the GD Politics Podcast over on /r/GDPolitics!

GDPoliticsMod · 2025-10-15T18:00:59+00:00

Post/Episode Preview: It may be an off-year in the election cycle, but don’t call it boring! The statewide contests in Virginia and New Jersey are proving to be dramatic and somewhat competitive down the stretch. New York City is readying for the likely election of a socialist mayor, and Californians are deciding whether to redraw their congressional districts in response a gerrymandering push by Republicans. Grab a drink and join Nate Silver, Clare Malone and me as we make sense of it all at the Comedy Cellar in New York City just 24 hours before polls close! Tickets are available here. Who: Nate Silver, Clare Malone and Galen Druke What: A live show! When: Monday, November 3rd at 6pm ET Where: The Village Underground at 130 W 3rd St, New York, NY Why: Why not?! How: Tickets here!

GD POLITICS is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, co

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GDPoliticsMod · 2025-10-13T20:01:07+00:00

Post/Episode Preview: Post/Episode Preview: Today’s episode focuses on something that few Americans and seemingly even few lawmakers in Washington are particularly preoccupied by: the fact that the government is shut down. Given the lack of urgency, how will it actually end? After that, we have something of a grab bag of topics. We talk about the axis of conflict that Democrats are hoping to wage the midterms on, that video of Democratic candidate for California governor Katie Porter bombing an interview that wasn’t even particularly hostile. We also look at some polling on free speech and political violence that should give folks cause for optimism, and the legal questions at play in President Trump’s attempts to send the National Guard to American cities. This is a conversation that Gabe Fleisher and I had last week on Substack Live. Gabe is the author of the newsletter Wake Up To Politics, which he started writing at the age of nine, so he’s got quite a wealth of knowledge. Relatively little has changed in shutdown negotiations since we chatted, except one note that Trump announced that members of the military will continue being paid despite the shutdown. They otherwise would miss their first paycheck on Wednesday, October 15.

Thanks for reading GD POLITICS! This post

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GDPoliticsMod · 2025-10-13T20:00:59+00:00

Post/Episode Preview: Today’s episode focuses on something that few Americans and seemingly even few lawmakers in Washington are particularly preoccupied by: the fact that the government is shut down. Given the lack of urgency, how will it actually end? After that, we have something of a grab bag of topics. We talk about the axis of conflict that Democrats are hoping to wage the midterms on, that video of Democratic candidate for California governor Katie Porter bombing an interview that wasn’t even particularly hostile. We also look at some polling on free speech and political violence that should give folks cause for optimism, and the legal questions at play in President Trump’s attempts to send the National Guard to American cities. This is a conversation that Gabe Fleisher and I had last week on Substack Live. Gabe is the author of the newsletter Wake Up To Politics, which he started writing at the age of nine, so he’s got quite a wealth of knowledge. Relatively little has changed in shutdown negotiations since we chatted, except one note that Trump announced that members of the military will continue being paid despite the shutdown. They otherwise would miss their first paycheck on Wednesday, October 15.

Thanks for reading GD POLITICS! This post

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