NEW YORK (Dispatches) – Last month, New York City’s Democratic mayoral candidate, Zohran Mamdani, not only mounted one of the biggest upsets in establishment politics in years, but he also won the most votes of any candidate on a primary ballot in the city’s history. 
New polling numbers released now show that his open support for Palestinian rights was the issue that “supercharged” his campaign.
An overwhelming 78 percent of New Yorkers who voted for Mamdani agreed with him that the Zionist regime is committing a genocide in Gaza, and 79 percent agreed that weapons transfers to the occupying regime should be restricted.
Out of New Yorkers who voted for him, 63 percent of those also supported arresting Zionist regime prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu - per the warrant from the International Criminal Court - if he visits New York City, something Mamdani has said he would do if he were to be elected mayor in November. 
The poll was commissioned by the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) Policy Project and conducted by Data for Progress, which collected responses from 513 Democratic primary voters from 11-17 July 2025. 
On all three questions, the largest segment of voters who agreed with Mamdani were those who did not vote in the last mayoral election in 2021 - suggesting they were either too young to vote or that Mamdani’s campaign is the one that moved them to the ballot box. 
When respondents were asked what issues affected their decision to vote for him, the top responses cited were his plans to lower the cost of living at 89 percent, and his plans to tax the wealthy and stand up to corporations, at 86 percent.
But the third reason they cited was his support for Palestinian rights, at 62 percent.
Among the new voters in 2025, that number rises to 83 percent, at a time when some states and international scholars, including Israeli experts and NGOs, have called the Zionist regime’s war on Gaza a genocide. 
But the sentiment against the occupying regime isn’t limited to just New York City.
A new Gallup poll reported by CNN shows Netanyahu’s approval rating among Americans at -23 points, his lowest in the U.S. since 1997.
Israel’s military aggression in Gaza were also negatively rated at -28 percent.
Overall, the number of Americans who sympathize with Israelis over Palestinians is at a historic low of +5 points, down from +48 in October 2023, before the Zionist regime’s war on Gaza.