2xParked #66

Primary Day, Secondary Info

“There are only two lines in this world I would even consider standing 45 minutes. The first is for a really great slice of pizza. The second is voting.” ~ A Very Hip Young Voter pre-2xParked, Interviewed by The Harold Sun (Australia), November 2016

Voted at 6:15 AM yesterday morning, and they rewarded me with this sticker.

Good morning. 🙋‍♂️. Time to wake up!

I ended up passing out around 11:15 PM last night after I looked at some data, wrote this up, and schedule sent this edition of 2xParked to be in your inbox bright and early.

Now that you have voted and the results are being tallied, I want to do a little thought exercise.

Close your eyes. 😊

Find a comfortable seat. 🛋️

Take a deep breath. 😤

Are you ready?

Let’s begin.

You are a New York voter. You have been following politics for the greater part of the past decade. Imagine a candidate who has these attributes:

• This candidate has charm and charisma that play well to the base on every TV appearance, whether its a press conference, morning show, or organized rally.

• This candidate can inspire a portion of the population that had been politically inactive to turn out and vote. This is a keystone of the win.

• This candidate won despite being seen as inexperienced and an underdog, defeating an opponent who had more experience on paper but ran a sub-optimal campaign.

• This candidate is willing to promote extreme policies. Some are unrealistic because of political opposition, some are impossible given the actual powers of the office, and some face serious infighting headwinds as they go against party norms.

• This candidate knows the math to victory. You don’t need everyone’s vote, just certain blocs. He can appeal more to the extreme than to the center, so long as the message hits right for enough votes to clear 50%. In effect, he is almost explicitly telling many sub-groups, “I’m not even trying to win you over.”

• Those who voted for this candidate can't understand how anyone wouldn't. Those who voted against can't understand how anyone would.

Who are you imagining?

I asked Claude for its response. Depending on your prior beliefs, you might be a little shocked.

Claude: These attributes describe two figures who, despite being ideological opposites, share a strikingly similar political playbook: Donald Trump (2016) and Zohran Mamdani (2025 NYC mayoral race).

Me back to Claude: Why would you think of these two candidates?

Claude: Because the description isn’t really a list of policies or an ideology—it’s a description of insurgent populism as a method, and these two are the cleanest left/right bookends of that method in recent memory.

The messages between Mamdani and Trump are clearly different; the underlying mechanics of their campaigning are really similar. So what does this mean for the next election? This primary is the next election, so I wanted to take a look at the early data and what it might indicate for future elections.

A handsome still-young voter caught off guard by Fox 5 after waking up at 6:15 to vote while wearing his Tri-City Valleycats with some great insights: “Really I have a direct influence on democracy and I can influence my elected officials and hold them accountable. They better do well the next 4, 2 years…. I have a political blog 2xParked [“Double Parked”] and one of the things I will be publishing is…seeing if Mamdani has a halo effect. Kind of like that we saw that after 2016, Trump did not have much a halo effect in his republican races, we’ll see if his [Mandani’s] endorsement has an impact on his democratic races.”

The Man or the Message?

There is a scene in Mad Men where they are recreating Ann-Margret’s rendition of Bye Bye Birdie as part of a new commercial campaign. Despite looking like Ann-Margret, sounding like Ann-Margret, and dancing like Ann-Margret, there is something off about the actress’s performance which does not hit. “It’s not Ann-Margret,” says Roger Sterling.

In 2023, Nate Silver wrote that “in general, Republicans have consistently done badly in the Trump era when Trump himself wasn’t running.” For Trump, it is very much about the man, not the message.

Silver doesn't attribute the GOP's struggles solely to his absence from the ballot. Much of the blame lies with the candidates themselves. They aren't Donald Trump (or Ann-Margret). They can say the things Trump says, and even win his public endorsement, but without the X-factor, that DJT charisma, they're often poor candidates, especially when they're pushing the unpopular policies Trump favors.

About Last Night

Now that we are in the first major election since Mamdani’s mayoral win, I want to see the extent of his political power. Does his base only come out to vote when he is on the ballot, or has his 2025 campaign excitement haloed into 2026?

This can’t be definitively answered tonight, and it is worth reevaluating throughout his tenure as mayor.

Here is how we stand as of 11:15 PM in some key races to give an early indicator (via the tally on the NY1 website).

For select Congress and NYS Senate races, larger races with lower year-to-year differences in population, I’ve included the “endorsed” candidate’s head-to-head % vs the top competitor. I then compared those figures to two benchmarks: Mamdani vs. Cuomo in the 2025 primary and Wiley vs. Adams in 2021. The 2021 race is a good proxy for the prior normal with Adams representing the “established” Democrats and the AOC-endorsed Wiley the business-as-usual progressive, a generally uninspiring candidate next to Mamdani.

You can see how much the vote shifted from Wiley in 2021 to Mamdani in 2025. This is likely due to a variety of factors, such as Mamdani being a better campaigner, worse 2021 macroeconomic factors post-Covid¹, difference in voter issues such as crime in 2021², and general population loss in the City between then and now³.

The Mamdani levels were likely never attainable, but progressives should still be very happy. The results reverted toward the 2021 mean, but the needle has clearly shifted.

The true victory for Mamdani was in NY13. Espaillat, as we read last week, ran a weak campaign . Mamdani clearly handled Cuomo in this district so it was prime territory for a pickup which hadn’t had had a competitive race since 2016.

The key lesson, though, is what I’ve been preaching for a while: it’s far easier to win when you only run one candidate. Marketing resources combine, and the messaging gets simpler. You could argue 3 or 4 candidates were vying to be the progressive in the 2024 NY10 race, splitting the vote and allowing Goldman to win with 26%. This year, the race was Brad Lander's to lose, a candidate who, despite not being the incumbent, had far more winning experience in the region.

It should be noted:

1. Quite a few votes remain to be counted before the numbers are settled.

2. There’s a much bigger gap between left-voters and right-voters (i.e., Trump’s general elections) than in NYC primaries, where it’s left vs. further left. Winning by switching voters is relatively easier in these primaries than relying only on exciting the base.

3. Despite often hurting his party’s chances at the ballot box, Trump has accumulated enough power to become the party. The long game has worked out for him as an individual, even if in the short term it hasn’t meant aggregate wins for the party.

Much like President Trump can boast a near-perfect endorsement record (this actually isn't technically a lie), we'll likely see the same "smart endorsement" strategy from Mamdani: backing the likely winners. Notice that no progressive candidate was endorsed in NY12, which likely would have been a progressive loss. And despite being cross-endorsed with Mamdani in the mayoral race, Mamdani didn't return the favor to Michael Blake in the race to unseat incumbent Ritchie Torres. It will be interesting to watch when Mamdani's endorsements become less about the outcome and more about the candidate, the way AOC's have.

We've seen with DJT that it's his way or the unemployment line: he uses his GOP kingmaker power to shun the non-conformers. I'm not suggesting that's what's next for Mamdani, but tonight highlights the power he could wield in the not-so-distant future. This power could matter a great deal for how he helps in November, in future special elections, and in making his initiatives real.

We have a long way to go until the actual midterms this November. Is it only June?… Oh boy….

Until next time,

Adam from 2xParked

1. NYC unemployment was 10.6% in June 2021 compared to 5.2% in June 2025.

2. There were 52% more murders and 116% more shootings in June 2021 compared to June 2025.

3. “From April of 2020 to July of 2022, the New York City population declined by 5.3 percent.” ~ Office of the NYS Comptroller: https://www.osc.ny.gov/files/reports/osdc/pdf/report-15-2024.pdf