Despite social media being more than a decade old, analysts are still using it to explain ‘shock’ results, explains James Kirkham. The media expert digs into more tangible reasons.
That speech Zohran Mamdani gave of a city built by immigrants, led by an immigrant, was exhilarating politics.
Dominated for years by rage-fuelled clickbait and divisive rhetoric, Mamdani’s win feels like a reset and a reminder that positivity, empathy and conviction can still win when almost everything else feels cynical or staged.
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His victory sits inside a shift away from the theatre of outrage and towards something honest, progressive and hopeful and I dislike the lazy generalisation of simply “he’s good at social media”, so have thought more about the working formula, and I think it looks like this:
1) Walk first, post later
The city met him before the algorithm did, and his conversations and field notes became policies. It was always about ground truths before some clever Tiktok growth hack and that’s why his digital presence never felt synthetic. Even when pre-election coverage framed him as “the internet’s mayor”, the truth was the opposite: the internet reflected the pavements, not the other way round.
2) Be a part of the conversations in the communities that already matter
He built depth from the outset rather than merely chasing polling and vote spikes. A catalogue of consistent stances and repeat visibility across communities (who often feel ignored or caricatured) was why his campaign withstood late attacks from the old political machine, and why the volunteer energy and youth turnout were so extraordinary.
3) Multilingual and multi-format, same soul
The content flexed but the character never did. Street clip with subtitled Q&As, and community halls filled to the brim and small-business drop-ins, and multi-language content all shared precisely the same human temperature and ethos and tone. That coherence is rarer than people think, because most campaigns panic and shapeshift to please everyone.
4) Make policy feel like a favor returned
When a promise sounds like your own conversation handed back to you, you want to protect it or push it to your own friends and family yourself. So hot-button topics like affordable housing, and need for higher wages, or importance of free buses, affordable childcare, were lofty manifestos, but day-to-day levers who matters to everybody outside of billionaire status. It reads as care, achievable and feasible care.
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5) Build for cycles, not spikes
Most brands and politicians still worship the viral hit or the one big stunt, the launch-day fireworks. But Mamdani’s method seems to be much quieter and in turn robust and sturdier too. He shows up, gather inputs, listens, absorbs, relays, turns them into action, then show the proof again and again. That’s how trust compounds and the electorate do the marketing for you..
Mamdani’s win proves that humanity still scales not because of algorithms, but in spite of them. After years of politics built on fear, where feeds caused hate and division and amplified it relentlessly, I think it’s thrilling to see a campaign built on faith in the city, in its people, and in the possibility of decency. That super smart use of social media was a lightning rod of this feeling is surprising and encouraging in equal measure.
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