In the race to become the next mayor of New York City, Democratic candidates in this month’s primary face a challenge and an opportunity: winning over Asian voters in their party who sat out last year’s presidential election. 

While some heavily Asian neighborhoods like South Ozone Park and Richmond Hill in Queens shifted towards Trump, other neighborhoods ended up in the Republican column not because large numbers of Asian voters switched parties, but because significant numbers of ed Democrats just stayed home.

Declines in turnout for Kamala Harris, compared with votes for Joe Biden four years earlier, were so sharp in seven heavily Asian neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens that Trump won those areas simply because of the sheer number of voters who stayed home after previously voting for the Democratic nominee.

Overall, Asians make up about 21% of the city’s voting-age population and span neighborhoods across the boroughs. Capturing their votes presents both an opportunity and a challenge for candidates, who must engage each community in culturally specific ways, strategists and community representatives say.

Some Democratic candidates for mayor are paying close attention to Asian voters — those who stayed home as well as those who jumped party lines to vote for Trump —and conducting far-reaching campaign outreach to Asian, Latino and Caribbean voters.

Candidates are betting their messages will appeal to a wide swath of voters and drive turnout. Some campaigns are relying on longstanding relationships with certain communities, while others are investing in translating their materials into many different languages and expanding their field organizing to neighborhoods that typically get overlooked.

Though nearly every neighborhood across the city shifted away from the Democratic nominee and toward the Republican in the 2024 presidential election, Democratic strategist Amit Singh Bagga said those shifts and patterns tell a deeper story. 

“As evident in our rock-bottom-turnout primaries, and successive elections in which Democrats have lost ground, it is imperative that we understand the needs of those we seek to represent,” Bagga said.

Voter pattern shifts for the most recent presidential election varied by neighborhood, yet communities are often viewed as an ethnic monolith, he noted. The city has voters from dozens of different countries that have unique experiences with democracy and voting. There are also often language barriers, or mis- and disinformation spread throughout communities.

He pointed to Queens’ South Ozone Park and Richmond Hill, with many Sikh, Punjabi and Indo-Caribbean voters, for example, citing a New York Times analysis. These neighborhoods shifted right — and significantly more so than Pakistani and Bangladeshi voters in the areas around Ocean Parkway near Kensington, Brooklyn, where Trump gained just one percentage point even as Harris lost 39.

Put differently, while for Harris declined at similar rates in the three neighborhoods, only South Ozone Park and Richmond Hill among them experienced proportional shifts to Trump.

“While the collective impact of these two trends could be perceived as the same, clearly the motivating factors of these two communities are vastly different,” Bagga said. “That demands exploration.” 

Data on blank ballots from the Democratic primary — a phenomenon driven largely by the pro-Palestinian “Leave It Blank” campaign —  suggested that drop around Kensington was due to opposition to U.S. government for the war in Gaza, rather than for Trump. Voters in South Ozone Park and Richmond Hill, on the other hand, may be more influenced by other factors, Bagga suggested.

Voting behaviors differ between South Asian and East Asian communities too, according to THE CITY’s analysis.

For example, Ozone Park and Richmond Hill remained blue in 2024 even though the decline in turnout for Harris among Democrats and progressives were among the most significant there compared to Joe Biden’s run in 2020. Meanwhile, parts of northeastern Queens with notable Chinese and Korean populations flipped to Trump, even as declines in those turnouts were less dramatic.

Asian communities were not the only ones to see Democratic voters stay home in last year’s general election. In heavily Latino Washington Heights in upper Manhattan, turnout by Democratic and Working Families voters also declined, with Harris underperforming Biden by 6 to 8 percentage points. 

And in North Corona in Queens, home to many South and Central Americans, Democratic turnout with Harris on the ballot in 2024 was 18 percentage points lower than when Biden ran in 2020. 

Shortly after the presidential election, mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani posted a video of himself interviewing a diverse array of New Yorkers on Hillside Avenue in Queens and Fordham Road in The Bronx who had either voted for Donald Trump, or sat out the election altogether. Several referenced the war on Gaza as a reason they did not want to vote for Harris. For many of them, Mamdani’s campaign’s message of affordability seemed to resonate. 

“Zohran has said since the beginning, we want to win the 26% of Democrats that voted in the last election, and we also want to reach the 74% who didn’t, and then the many more who are not ed at all,” said campaign spokesperson Andrew Epstein, referring to the turnout in 2021’s mayoral primary. He said he sees an opportunity to inform voters about an election that they might not be aware of and which could result much differently compared to the presidential election.

Mamdani, who has been polling in second place, initially focused on turning out South Asian and Muslim communities, he said, but has expanded its focus. According to the campaign, the more than 21,000 volunteers for Mamdani’s campaign speak more than a dozen languages — recently showcased in a recent video — and aim to knock on about 1.5 million doors by the time the primary hits.

On Monday, Sen. John Liu of Queens — the first Asian-American to hold citywide office as comptroller — threw his behind Mamdani. Liu said Mamdani’s campaign and its outreach strategy was effective in centering what matters to most New Yorkers, even given the diversity of New York’s Asian communities.

“You can always point out the differences but there’s so much more in common,” Liu told THE CITY. “The issues of Asian American New Yorkers are not that different from the bread and butter issues of the average New Yorker: transit, childcare, schools, community safety.”

Unreached Masses

Although the city’s $8-to-$1 matching-funds program ideally makes it easier for anyone to run competitively, later payments and spending caps result in campaigns going after the same reliable voters to win, Bagga noted. 

“That electorate is whiter, Blacker, more home-owning and more English-speaking than the electorate writ large,” he said. “It should come as no surprise that Asian and Latino communities are giving up on Democrats because Democrats are doing little to talk to them.”

Bagga, who worked as the deputy director of the city’s Census outreach in 2020, said the strategy of consistent communications was successful, even though it launched at the start of the COVID-19 shutdown. 

“We saved a congressional seat when we were slated to lose two, we brought three new state legislative seats to primarily immigrant communities in New York City, and we saved billions in federal funding for our communities,” he said. 

There’s a lot of potential to engage Asian and Latino communities — but that requires understanding them, said people who work within and are part of them. 

Anita Gundanna, co-executive director of Coalition for Asian American Children and Families, pointed out that many in the multifaceted Asian and Asian-American communities face language barriers and don’t get their information from mainstream media, instead relying on social media and word of mouth.

“A lot of folks remain unreached, and a lot of folks who remain unreached are the folks who struggle the most. That is always going to be important to understand in of whatever strategy or tactic is being employed for voter engagement,” Gundanna said. 

She emphasized that Asians face the “myth of the monolith,” which is what candidates should be prepared to dispel and address with both their outreach and policy platforms.

With less than a month left until the primary election, most candidates are covering as much ground as they can to reach voters, translating their messages into other languages and leveraging endorsements and relationships with community groups to make inroads with communities. Many — but not all — of them have appeared at countless mayoral forums.

Other former and current elected officials, including former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, former Comptroller Scott Stringer, Comptroller Brad Lander, and state Sens. Zellnor Myrie and Jessica Ramos, have been leaning on the relationships they’ve formed with communities over their years in public service.

Cuomo, who is leading the polls, has run a campaign largely out of the public eye — skipping public mayoral forums and largely declining to speak with press — but through appearances at houses of worship, senior centers, and public housing developments, as well as meeting with community leaders and elected officials. 

“The strategy is simple: reach and represent all New Yorkers, in every neighborhood and from every walk of life,” said Cuomo spokesperson Esther Jensen. “He’s working hard to earn every vote and we’ve been humbled by the breadth of from every corner of the city — a resilient coalition that reflects the culture and diversity of New York — and that is why Governor Cuomo is leading in every borough, every poll, and among every race, ethnicity, and gender.”

Stringer touted his “robust, multi-borough, multi-ethnic media and social campaign” to reach the “diverse electorate.”  

“As you follow us on social media, you see us moving in those communities that I long represented, where I’ve had very serious relationships,” he said.

Although his campaign has not yet sent out canvassers to knock on doors or translated its materials yet, it plans to, Stringer said. There’s also a “heavy media buy” for Latino communities in the works.

Lander’s campaign has focused more on meeting voters in public places.

“Every day, Brad is meeting voters in every corner of our great city — on subways, in parks, at school drop offs,” said spokesperson Kat Capossela. “Every day, you can find our multilingual organizing team across the city’s highest visibility areas, handing out campaign literature in multiple languages to ensure we reach every New York City voter.”

He recently released an agenda for Asian American and Pacific Islander communities at a campaign event in Chinatown.

Myrie’s campaign, the first to air a Spanish-language ad, said it is taking a “community organizing” approach to voter outreach, including talking to religious leaders in Fresh Meadows, Queens, about antisemitism, and arming its multilingual canvassers with neighborhood-specific, sometimes translated, campaign material. The campaign also employs an Asian American Pacific Islander liaison and has been featuring Spanish-speaking influencers in its digital content. 

Raised by Costa Rican-born parents, Myrie grew up in a Spanish-speaking household but says he understands the language better than he speaks it.

“Building off Zellnor’s long-standing community relationships, the campaign is partnering with local electeds, rather than parachuting into communities,” said Maya Handa, Myrie’s campaign manager. “This strategy is specifically designed to engage working-class New Yorkers, communities of color, and communities that are often overlooked in electoral politics.”

Ramos, the only candidate who speaks fluent Spanish, represents the Queens multi-ethnic neighborhoods of Corona, Elmhurst, East Elmhurst and Jackson Heights — which saw some of the largest swings to the right. She said that voters across distinct working class communities in her district have been motivated by the affordability crisis, one she’s seeking to solve.

“I’m running to bring the voices of all working people to city hall to center our agencies and taxpayer dollars on our shared prosperity,” Ramos said in a statement. “That is a unifying message that brings New Yorkers together across ethnicities and even political parties.”

Entrepreneur Whitney Tilson’s campaign says Tilson’s messages will reach voters who care. He has been outwardly ive of Israel and Ukraine, has pushed for education reform and defended entry tests for the city’s specialized high schools. 

“Our campaign will continue communicating these positions to Jewish voters, Ukrainian-American voters, and voters of color, including ed Democrats in those communities who have either been drifting to the right or voting infrequently,”  spokesperson Daniel Marans said. 

The campaign for Speaker Adrienne Adams, which on Friday qualified for public matching funds, plans to send out literature in Spanish and Haitian Creole, a spokesperson said. 

For all the candidates, time is of the essence to win votes — especially as they poll far behind Cuomo and are up against his broad name recognition.

“How do you do what is necessary, and do that within a four-week span?” said Eli Valentin, founder of the Institute of Latino Politics and Policy. “That’s where it gets critical for those that are not named Cuomo.”