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WHY DOES THE NEW YORK TIMES KEEP IGNORING POLLS SHOWING MAMDANI
LEADING WITH JEWISH VOTERS?  
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Adam Johnson
August 27, 2025
In These Times
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_ Polling shows mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani in a commanding lead
with Jewish New Yorkers, but you won’t read about it in the paper of
record. _

Zohran Mamdani speaking to nearly 4000 supporters at a scavenger hunt
in Manhattan Sunday, August 17 in New York City., Photo: Instagram //
India Times

 

In the months leading up to New York assemblymember Zohran Mamdani’s
surprise win in the June 24 Democratic primary, the _New York
Times_—as I documented at the time
[[link removed]]—used
innuendo, sectarian framing, and a heavy dose of weasel words to
repeatedly imply that Mamdani was uniquely struggling to win the
support of New York’s Jewish voters. ​“Mr. Mamdani, for
example, has alienated parts of the city’s large Jewish
community,” Nicholas Fandos wrote on June 5
[[link removed]]. ​“New
York City is home to the largest Jewish population outside Israel and
Mr. Mamdani has been criticized for accusing Israel of committing
genocide in the war in Gaza,” Jeffery C. Mays and Maya King
wrote on March 23
[[link removed]].
​“Mr. Mamdani, who is Muslim, defends his use of the term
​‘genocide’ to describe Israel’s actions against
Gaza,” added
[[link removed]] Jeffrey
Mays on May 19, in an article about ​“Israel and Antisemitism”
looming large in the mayor’s race. 

Reading this coverage of the primary, readers would understandably
come away with the impression that Mamdani was having difficulty
appealing to Jewish voters compared to the other candidates in the
race. But there was only one problem: This narrative had zero
empirical basis. Since the primary, the _New York Times_ never
bothered to support it with any evidence, and to the extent their
claims were technically true — for example, that Mamdani
had ​“alienated parts” of the Jewish community — they
were fatuous to the point of meaninglessness. Any candidate
without 100 percent support from any demographic will have
technically ​“alienated parts” of said community. Why was this
formulation only used for Mamdani and Jewish voters but no
one else? 

A more accurate description the _New York Times_ could have printed
is that Mamdani was struggling with pro-Israel organizations, but this
would come off unduly political, so instead the outlet simply
used ​“Jewish voters” as a stand-in for Zionist
advocacy groups.

Indeed, two recent polls show Mamdani well ahead with Jewish voters.
The first, a July Zenith Research poll
[[link removed]],
shows Mamdani with a 17 point lead with New York Jewish voters
with 43 percent of the total, compared to 26 percent for his rival
Andrew Cuomo, 15 percent for Mayor Eric Adams and 9 percent for
Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa. A second poll, also from July, by
GQR Research [[link removed]], which was
commissioned by an anti-Mamdani, pro-Israel organization New York
Solidarity Network, found Mamdani leading with Jewish New Yorkers
by 12 percentage points — 37 percent for
Mamdani, 25 percent for Adams, 21 percent for Cuomo,
and 14 percent for Sliwa. No public polls released since the primary
show Mamdani trailing among Jewish voters. 

The _Times_’ response to these polls? To simply ignore them.
Indeed, when the outlet finally got around to reporting on Mamdani’s
relationship with Jewish New Yorkers earlier this month (“Many
Jewish Voters Back Mamdani. And Many Agree With Him on Gaza
[[link removed]]”,
by Liam Stack 8/4/25), they not only failed to mention the Zenith
Research and GQR polls, but made the rather strange claim that finding
out who Jewish New Yorkers prefer for mayor was apparently somehow
ontologically unknowable. 

“It is difficult to determine how many Jewish voters supported Mr.
Mamdani because even in New York, the Jewish population is too small
to be measured with precision by most polls,” the article states. 

The estimated Jewish population of New York City is almost one
million
[[link removed]] people — making
it greater than the populations of five U.S. states. When _In These
Times_ reached out to the _New York Times_ asking why the article
had disregarded the two polls in question, Managing Director of
External Communications Charlie Stadtlander responded by
saying, ​“When considering what data to include in our stories,
our polling and data teams look at all available data, but we try to
only cite nonpartisan sources that are transparent about their methods
and widely regarded as reliable, and we avoid citing data that is from
pollsters with unclear methods or from organizations with agendas,
such as campaigns, allies, outfits without a recognized history or
advocacy organizations. In this instance the array of
data — including the two polls you cited and other polls
available at that time to assess Mr. Mamdani’s support among Jewish
voters — yielded somewhat conflicting findings, and new data on
the subject has not added much clarity.”

When it comes to the central issue of who was leading with Jewish
voters, however, the publicly-available data did not yield conflicted
findings: Both polls showed Mamdani with a double digit lead among
Jewish New Yorkers. Moreover, the _Times _has cited
[[link removed]] GQR
Research several times
[[link removed]] over
the years
[[link removed]] and frequently
[[link removed]] uses
[[link removed]] GQR’s
data in their Upshot election forecasting model. And while Zenith
Research is a fairly new polling outlet, its founder, longtime
pollster Adam Carlson is frequently
[[link removed]] quoted
[[link removed]] in
the _Times_
[[link removed]].
While Stadtlander is correct that GQR’s poll was commissioned by
a biased party, it _was a poll commissioned by a biased party in
opposition to Mamdani_. The fact that even this poll showed Mamdani
with a comfortable 12 point lead with Jewish voters is all the more
reason the _Times_ ought to have incorporated it into their
reporting on Mamdani’s standing in the Jewish community. Instead,
Stack’s article is peppered with a string of unhelpful weasel
words
[[link removed]]—twelve ​“somes”
and ten ​“manys” in total, including two in the
headline alone.

It’s also worth noting that Zenith Research, anticipating criticism
from pro-Israel, anti-Mamdani groups, laid out their poll’s
methodology in detail
[[link removed]].

When asked about this dynamic, and the fact that both polls showed
a consistent lead with Jewish voters by Mamdani, Stadtlander and
the _New York Times_ did not directly respond to these points,
instead offering vague reference to the alleged statistical pitfalls
of polling Jewish New Yorkers. 

“I don’t have more to offer beyond the comment I already sent
over,“ Stadtlander wrote via email. ​“If you’re serious about
looking into this topic I’d urge you to talk to experienced,
nonpartisan pollsters about the challenges of measuring sentiment
across the Jewish population. Pew is the generally acknowledged gold
standard, but KFF, Ipsos, and SSRS are all well-established polling
operations to consult as well.” To which I replied, ​“Can you
please point to any academic or professional writing on why polling
Jewish people is uniquely difficult? It’s a claim made in the
August 4 article, but isn’t accompanied by any link or citation.
Can you provide one for my own edification?”

At this point Stadtlander ceased replying. The _New York_ _Times_,
it’s worth highlighting, had no problem citing polls of Jewish New
Yorkers this May and in the days before the June 24 election when
they showed Mamdani in third place and second place,
respectively. ​“In a recent Marist poll, Mr. Cuomo led
with 26 percent of Jewish voters ranking him as their first choice.
Mr. Lander was at 17 percent, followed by Mr. Mamdani
at 14 percent,” Jeffery C. Mays wrote in May
[[link removed]], citing
a Marist poll of Jewish New Yorkers
[[link removed]]. ​“A
new survey from the Marist Institute for Public Opinion released on
Wednesday showed that Mr. Cuomo is the first choice of 40 percent of
likely Jewish primary voters. But Mr. Mamdani is second, with
about 20 percent” Nicholas Fandos and Dana Rubinstein wrote on
June 19
[[link removed]] in
an article that fanned the flames of the so-called ​“Globalize
the Intifada” non-story.

So, clearly some polls can pin down Jewish sentiment to
the _Times_’ editorial liking. Yet the polls that have been
released since the primary — which show Mamdani with a double
digit lead among Jewish New Yorkers — apparently cannot. Bad
luck for readers interested in what Jewish New Yorkers actually think
of Mamdani beyond innuendo suggesting he is
uniquely ​“alienating” them, or trend pieces that imply Mamdani
has ​“some” support but give the reader the general impression
it remains fringe and boutique in nature. 

The reality is we have very good empirical reason to believe Mamdani
is the top candidate with Jewish New Yorkers. Likely not the majority,
but certainly a plurality, and in line with his broader polling
numbers in a contested, multi-candidate general election race. This
dynamic has been reported on by _The Times of Israel_
[[link removed]], _Haaretz_
[[link removed]], _Jewish
News Syndicate_,
[[link removed]] _The __Forward_
[[link removed]],
and _Jewish Insider_
[[link removed]]—but
it has conspicuously been ignored by the _New York Times_, which
hasn’t touched the evidence supporting this dynamic, or published
any acknowledgment that it even exists.

_[ADAM H. JOHNSON is a media analyst and co-host of the Citations
Needed [[link removed]] podcast.]_

_Reprinted with permission from In These Times
[[link removed]].
All rights reserved. _

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* Zohran Mamdani
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* New York City mayoral election
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* Jewish voters
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* Andrew Cuomo
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* Eric Adams
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* anti-Semitism
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* Donald Trump
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* New York City
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* Democratic Party
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* Politics
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* The New York Times
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