Zohran Mamdani is a digital native, with New York as his physical address.
For his mayoral campaign, he harnessed the power of social networking applications to organise locally, counter smear campaigns, and encourage people to turn out to vote — even those who had supported Donald Trump during his 2024 presidential campaign.
The 34-year-old’s knack for making campaign videos go viral dates back to 2024, when he began posting short conversations with New York-based Trump voters, helping him build his profile on TikTok and Instagram. The man with more than 5.5 million followers on Instagram does not shy away from following people outside political circles, such as singers Coco Jones, Zara Larsson and Troye Sivan.
A self-confessed TikTok addict, Mamdani’s dream dinner guest is not someone like the late Steve Jobs. Instead, he would prefer Huge Ma, the virtual folk hero who created TurboVax, a portal that compiled publicly available information about vaccine appointments, making it easier for New Yorkers to “actually sign up” at the height of Covid.
Unlike Barack Obama or Donald Trump, Mamdani grew up in the era of Hulu. His childhood was spent playing computer games such as FIFA, SimCity and RollerCoaster Tycoon. In a way, these games introduced him to the world of online chat rooms. In high school, his “sense of politics was Facebook wall debates going back and forth”.
Videos have been integral to Mamdani’s campaign. He has posted dozens — mostly serious and some irreverent — that have resonated with many New Yorkers. One of his popular videos captures the struggles of food cart owners in Lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park, who were suffering from “Halalflation” (a term coined to describe the rising cost of food cart meals). Another shows him wearing a business suit while diving into the Atlantic Ocean during the Coney Island Polar Bear Plunge — a stunt designed to highlight his plan to freeze rent on stabilised apartments. Fast-forward to last week, when Congress leader Rahul Gandhi dived into a muddy pool in Bihar to interact with fishermen at the spot. The leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha was there to address a rally in Begusarai district.
Strengthening Mamdani’s social media push is Andrew Epstein, who leads a team of video producers. The creative director recently told the Financial Times: “One of the reasons our social media and our videos are so successful is that, as people were developing this relationship with Zohran and our agenda through their phones, they were then getting their doors knocked on by volunteers, or they were seeing canvassers in the street, or they were turning on their TV or listening to a podcast.”
Mamdani’s youth outreach has also come in the form of his campaign visuals, designed by Philadelphia-based graphic designer Aneesh Bhoopathy. From posters to bodega awnings, Bhoopathy has taken inspiration from Bollywood posters. Some of Mamdani’s campaign advertisements share the language of Bollywood, like the video inspired by a scene from the 1975 film Deewar.
Age is on Mamdani’s side. He entered politics roughly a decade ago and was first elected to the New York State Assembly in 2020. He is quite unlike Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, who is 74.
Before election day, Mamdani even hosted a press conference for digital influencers, who questioned him on education, immigration and childcare policies. More than 70 creators from Twitch, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, X, Substack and various podcasts attended, together commanding an audience of over 77.3 million followers.
The strategy could well be described as Obama 2.0. After all, Barack Obama was the first US President to truly harness the power of social media.