Mamdani’s victory is not the only pro-Palestine earthquake shaking American politics

He had a 10-point lead over 35-year-old Omar Fateh, a state senator who, like Frey, is a Democrat and emerged as the leading challenger to oust the two-term office holder.

At time of writing, Frey, who is Jewish and has supported Israel, had secured 60,735 votes (41.8 per cent) and was up more than 10 points on the anti-Israel Fateh, who had 46,131 votes (31.7 per cent), with 98 per cent of votes counted.

Because no candidate garnered a majority of the vote, the city has moved to ranked voting from Wednesday, in which voters list three candidates in order of preference.

As candidates with the lowest number of votes are eliminated, their votes are reallocated based on a voter’s next choice until one candidate gets more than 50 per cent.

Somali-American Fateh has drawn comparisons with Mamdani: both young, both socialist, both fiercely pro-Palestine, both having accused Israel of “genocide”.

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), of which both he and Mamdani are members, endorsed Fateh, as did CAIR Action and Jewish Voice for Peace, both of which have histories of anti-Israel statements.

Should he win, these similarities are significant as they indicate a new reality in US politics – that Mamdani is not a one-off.

While the Trump administration has backed Israel against Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, with the president promising “eternal peace” in the Middle East, there now seems no doubt that the American political pendulum is swinging away from Zionism.

On the right, much of the “America First” crowd sees Israel as a hostile foreign entity, draining taxpayer dollars and, with no little hint of antisemitic conspiracy, exerting undue influence on Washington.

At the other end of the spectrum, candidates like Mamdani and Fateh are breaking the Democratic mould – centrist, largely united on Israel’s right to exist, hawkish on defence – crafted by Obama, Biden and Harris.

Instead, they are building a new movement on the backs of the young, the disenfranchised and the disaffected, all of whom, as recent polling has shown, are increasingly swinging against Israel.

They see the conflict in Gaza as a question of right and wrong, oppressor vs oppressed, and the struggle for decolonisation, and dismiss the realists’ paradigm of a struggle between geopolitical interests.

Should both of Mamdani and Fateh emerge victorious, they will prove the efficacy of a different kind of approach, one pushing youth, dynamism, progressivism, and anti-Israelism to the fore, in uniting constituencies from true-blue New York to the swing state battleground of Minnesota.

Not since Obama’s surge from obscurity in 2008 have the Democrats found a tried and tested formula to both energise their base and attract to the average voter to their own policy platform (and not, as was the case with Biden in 2020, unite them around hatred of Trump).

Victory for Mamdani and Fateh, along with their DSA comrade Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez’s coming of presidential age in this cycle, may tempt the party to heave its creaking, aged machinery behind a much younger face – and that’s bad news for Israel.