Throughout New York City’s mayoral race, Zohran Mamdani’s critics routinely attributed his rise to his slick and entertaining social media content, allowing them to dismiss the appeal of his politics. It’s certainly true that Mamdani’s social media was more successful than Andrew Cuomo’s. But is it true that voters were merely wooed by Mamdani’s high production quality and style?
To find out, Jacobin analyzed each campaign’s first thirty TikTok videos. What we found was another, much more prominent difference between Cuomo’s and Mamdani’s social media content. Our analysis suggests that the core distinction between the two candidates’ communication strategies was not style but policy.
By tallying mentions of keywords, we were able to quantify how much time each candidate devoted to policy. Take the word rent. Across these first thirty videos, Mamdani said it eighteen times, while Cuomo did not say it at all. Working class, ten to zero. Childcare, four to zero. Buses, fifteen to zero. Affordable, seven to one. Groceries, four to zero. Cost of living, four to zero. Labor, two to two. Wealth, six to zero. Trump, twenty-five to seven. Gaza, four to zero. Palestine, five to zero. Antisemitism, zero to three. Climate, four to zero. Public renewables, three to zero. Police/cops, three to seven. Safe, one to fourteen.
This breakdown validates what many perceived: Mamdani hammered home specific solutions to the high cost of living and other working-class issues. Cuomo, meanwhile, talked about only one local political issue in specific terms: public safety. Cuomo placed more emphasis on accusing Mamdani of antisemitism over his Gaza stance than he did on housing, childcare, transportation, or affordability combined.
Drilling down a little further, of these first thirty videos, Cuomo introduced a policy proposal only once and explained that same policy only once. In contrast, fourteen of Mamdani’s videos introduced or referenced a policy, while eight…
Auteur: Ashley Bishop
