Bunchy Carter
I'll Take The Money Over The Honey
Perry Bacon Jr.
July 14, 2025
Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani speaks during a rally at the Hotel & Gaming Trades Council headquarters in New York on July 2. (Richard Drew/AP)
A long list of New York’s Black pastors and politicians endorsed former governor Andrew M. Cuomo in the run-up to the city’s Democratic primary for mayor last month. But it wasn’t surprising that freelance journalist Anthony Conwright and many other younger Black New Yorkers ignored those endorsements and chose state Assembly member Zohran Mamdani instead. Conwright backed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) during the 2016 and 2020 Democratic primaries and voted for Kamala Harris in last year’s general election but found her campaign wanting.
Mamdani “made the case that his policies are a moral imperative,” Conwright, 39, told me.
It has been well-chronicled that more African Americans, particularly younger ones, are voting Republican than in the past. But there are growing signs of another crucial shift — the younger African Americans who remain Democrats are dissatisfied with the party’s center-left establishment and increasingly open to progressive candidates and stances. The days of center-left Democrats such as Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden winning primaries by overwhelmingly carrying the Black vote might be over.
That increases the possibility of leftist candidates such as Mamdani winning mayoral and congressional primaries and perhaps even the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination.
Most polls don’t include enough Black Democrats to allow for age comparisons. But there are several clear indicators of a generational divide. Though Sanders, a socialist like Mamdani, struggled to win over Black voters in the 2016 and 2020 Democratic primaries, he did much better among the younger bloc. Polls show that younger African Americans are more open than their older counterparts to reducing police funding, abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, allowing transgender athletes to compete in sports according to their chosen gender identity and other progressive positions.
Surveys during Biden’s tenure consistently showed younger African American Democrats were much less enthusiastic about him than older ones. In the New York race, Black voters ages 50 and older supported Cuomo over Mamdani by a 64-36 margin, according to an exit poll conducted by Change Research. But about 70 percent of Black voters younger than 50 favored Mamdani.
“Zohran has largely stood up for Palestinian liberation, before and while running, so I know he won’t waver in the face of political pressure when it comes to other pressing issues of justice and human rights,” said 39-year-old Andom Ghebreghiorgis, a New Yorker who works in education.
How are these shifts happening, particularly at the same time — some young Black voters moving right, others left and perhaps even some Mamdani-Trump voters? One explanation is that Black America is changing broadly in ways that are also showing up in election results. Though there was never a monolithic “Black community,” that’s even more true today. There are growing numbers of Black Americans who live in the suburbs, not cities, aren’t married to other Black people, don’t belong to churches and/or weren’t born in the United States.
The center-left establishment wing of the Democratic Party has strong ties with older Black pastors and community leaders, such as the Rev. Al Sharpton in New York. Many older Black voters credit the Democratic Party for ending segregation and fighting for civil rights in the 1950s and ’60s. But those connections and histories aren’t as electorally potent among younger African Americans who weren’t alive in the early days of integration, don’t live in heavily Black areas, and aren’t involved with churches and civic groups such as the NAACP and Urban League.
Via: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/07/14/young-black-voters-democrats-trump-mamdani/
Young Black voters are abandoning the Democratic establishment
African American voters are moving away from the Democratic establishment.July 14, 2025
Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani speaks during a rally at the Hotel & Gaming Trades Council headquarters in New York on July 2. (Richard Drew/AP)
A long list of New York’s Black pastors and politicians endorsed former governor Andrew M. Cuomo in the run-up to the city’s Democratic primary for mayor last month. But it wasn’t surprising that freelance journalist Anthony Conwright and many other younger Black New Yorkers ignored those endorsements and chose state Assembly member Zohran Mamdani instead. Conwright backed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) during the 2016 and 2020 Democratic primaries and voted for Kamala Harris in last year’s general election but found her campaign wanting.
Mamdani “made the case that his policies are a moral imperative,” Conwright, 39, told me.
It has been well-chronicled that more African Americans, particularly younger ones, are voting Republican than in the past. But there are growing signs of another crucial shift — the younger African Americans who remain Democrats are dissatisfied with the party’s center-left establishment and increasingly open to progressive candidates and stances. The days of center-left Democrats such as Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden winning primaries by overwhelmingly carrying the Black vote might be over.
That increases the possibility of leftist candidates such as Mamdani winning mayoral and congressional primaries and perhaps even the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination.
Most polls don’t include enough Black Democrats to allow for age comparisons. But there are several clear indicators of a generational divide. Though Sanders, a socialist like Mamdani, struggled to win over Black voters in the 2016 and 2020 Democratic primaries, he did much better among the younger bloc. Polls show that younger African Americans are more open than their older counterparts to reducing police funding, abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, allowing transgender athletes to compete in sports according to their chosen gender identity and other progressive positions.
Surveys during Biden’s tenure consistently showed younger African American Democrats were much less enthusiastic about him than older ones. In the New York race, Black voters ages 50 and older supported Cuomo over Mamdani by a 64-36 margin, according to an exit poll conducted by Change Research. But about 70 percent of Black voters younger than 50 favored Mamdani.
“Zohran has largely stood up for Palestinian liberation, before and while running, so I know he won’t waver in the face of political pressure when it comes to other pressing issues of justice and human rights,” said 39-year-old Andom Ghebreghiorgis, a New Yorker who works in education.
How are these shifts happening, particularly at the same time — some young Black voters moving right, others left and perhaps even some Mamdani-Trump voters? One explanation is that Black America is changing broadly in ways that are also showing up in election results. Though there was never a monolithic “Black community,” that’s even more true today. There are growing numbers of Black Americans who live in the suburbs, not cities, aren’t married to other Black people, don’t belong to churches and/or weren’t born in the United States.
The center-left establishment wing of the Democratic Party has strong ties with older Black pastors and community leaders, such as the Rev. Al Sharpton in New York. Many older Black voters credit the Democratic Party for ending segregation and fighting for civil rights in the 1950s and ’60s. But those connections and histories aren’t as electorally potent among younger African Americans who weren’t alive in the early days of integration, don’t live in heavily Black areas, and aren’t involved with churches and civic groups such as the NAACP and Urban League.
Via: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/07/14/young-black-voters-democrats-trump-mamdani/
