How Zohran Mamdani harnessed all generations in unprecedented campaign

Accounts of Zohran Mamdani’s campaign for Mayor of New York City have highlighted both his online presence and his ground game.

Mamdani won the general election with 50.4% of the vote, a much larger share than most polls had predicted, and his get-out-the-vote campaign has received some credit. Mamdani claims that his campaign involved over 100,000 volunteers knocking on doors throughout New York City.

This focus on grassroots mobilization follows the increasing focus on online campaigning over the past 15 years.

Particularly during that time period, online platforms have been a major focus of political campaigns and campaign research. Targeted advertising and new media strategies are increasingly considered central to campaign success. Similarly coverage of the campaign by heritage and social media is also generally high.

Furthermore, solid empirical evidence of the effectiveness of door-to-door canvassing is limited. Recent work has found little effect of in-person campaigning, except in very specific circumstances. A recent paper suggests that door-to-door campaigning by a candidate can make a difference to election results. But in the New York City race, it is unlikely that Mamdani himself was able to reach enough voters to make a difference.

How much did Mamdani’s ground game contribute to his victory? As a political communication scholar, I know that it is difficult to assess the impact of different methods used by political campaigns – partly because political campaigns involve many lines of communication.

‘Hybrid’ campaign

No campaign is isolated – almost every candidate’s campaign runs concurrently with the campaigns of opposing candidates. The effects of one campaign are often overshadowed by the adverse effects of another.

The size of a campaign on one platform is also correlated with the size of that candidate’s campaign on other platforms. When television advertising grows alongside social media advertising and door-to-door advertising, it can be difficult to identify the effects of any one platform.

Clever research designs are able to identify effects in some cases. These generally found that the impact of not only door knocking but also advertisements and online advertising may be relatively limited.

In the modern technological environment, it can be particularly difficult to measure the impact of any one aspect of a campaign. Campaigns are increasingly taking place in what researchers have called a “hybrid media” environment. Campaigns are run in person, on the news, and across multiple social media.

Each of these platforms comes with different advantages and disadvantages. Each person also prioritizes different types of information.

Clearly stating your policy platform can work to prevent coverage of a campaign on the evening news. But if you want that strategy to go viral on TikTok, you may need to add a dance — or an influencer.

Find volunteers online, send them knocking

Candidates have increasingly recognized the need to tailor messages for different communications platforms such as television commercials, Facebook posts and TikTok, creating hybrid campaigns that attempt to spread a single message across multiple, different venues.

This engagement across platforms was particularly evident in the post-election assessments of the Mamdani campaign. Their social media campaign was adept at creating the type of content that attracts attention online. The campaign appears to be able to transform online participation into real-world activism, including door-to-door canvassing.

There are growing concerns among academics and campaign organizers about “slacktivism” – activism that amounts to a click or two online but nothing more. One concern is that instant online support may in some cases make people feel that they have had their work done and may limit more active forms of engagement. The Mamdani campaign appears to have at least partially overcome this problem.

But knocking on the doors of 100,000 people probably doesn’t equate to success for an online campaign. Ultimately, finding and mobilizing preachers was an important focus of Mamdani’s online involvement.

Do it yourself – then repeat on social media

Mamdani’s personal campaigning on the street and in the taxi line has almost certainly been made more effective through dissemination on Instagram and TikTok.

Using mass media to disseminate propaganda campaigns is certainly nothing new.

However, creating campaigns that produce good social media content is becoming more common. The ways in which campaigns unfold in person are becoming increasingly interconnected online.

In this way, the Mamdani campaign could be a textbook example of a modern hybrid campaign and an example of the co-evolution of digital and grassroots campaigns.

Clearly, the success of the Mamdani campaign is probably not about his online presence or his ground game, but both at the same time.