{"id":1077,"date":"2025-11-03T10:36:28","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T15:36:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbump.net\/o\/?p=1077"},"modified":"2025-11-03T10:36:47","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T15:36:47","slug":"no-1-in-11-new-yorkers-will-not-move-if-mamdani-wins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pbump.net\/o\/no-1-in-11-new-yorkers-will-not-move-if-mamdani-wins\/","title":{"rendered":"No, 1 in 11 New Yorkers will not move if Mamdani wins"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The headline in the New York Post<\/a> was characteristically cautious: “Nearly a million New Yorkers ready to flee NYC if Mamdani becomes mayor<\/strong> \u2014 possibly igniting mass exodus: poll.” Why the departure of almost a million of the city’s 8.4 million residents isn’t itself<\/em> a mass exodus isn’t really explained in the article that follows, but, look. If the game is constantly ratcheting up the fear factor, you have to have somewhere to take the panic, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As someone within the fallout radius of the New York City mayoral race, it’s striking how much of the late-campaign rhetoric is centered on terrifying voters. My sons, aged 6 and 8, had never seen footage of the World Trade Center attack until this weekend when, during the World Series, an Andrew Cuomo ad used the footage to suggest that a Zohran Mamdani victory would somehow lead to a second such attack. You know, because “Muslim.” (That the actual mayor during that attack was an older Italian guy seems not to have occurred to Cuomo’s rabid ad team.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Post’s “nearly a million” story is based on a Daily Mail article<\/a> that is itself derived from a poll completed for the tabloid by the firm J.L. Partners. Incidentally, the “nearly a million” is actually “at least 765,000 citizens,” according to the Daily Mail, a figure that is equivalent to 9 percent of the city’s population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That 9 percent is the point, actually. According to the poll, that’s the percentage of all city residents who told the pollsters they would “definitely leave” if Mamdani is elected (as other polls suggest he will be). In other words, about 90 people told J.L. Partners they would absolutely, no-question move if Mamdani wins and that became “nearly a million” in New-York-Postese.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

J.L. Partners isn’t a terrible pollster, earning a B\/C grade<\/a> in analysis from The Silver Bulletin earlier this year. It was, however, one of three pollsters that overestimated Republican support<\/a> in the 2024 election cycle, which is perhaps not a surprise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem here, really, is that you can’t extrapolate in the way that the Post and Daily Mail are extrapolating. Not because a poll of 1,000 people is too small to provide insights; it isn’t. But because it’s much, much easier to say “I will definitely move” than it is to actually move. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consider, for example, that one-fifth of respondents from Staten Island said they would definitely leave the city. No, they won’t! They already barely live in New York City as it is. One percent of Mamdani voters<\/em> are definitely going to move if he wins? I have to say that that seems a bit incongruous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There have certainly been moments in the city’s past when people have actually packed up and left. There was a period of stagnation in the mid-1900s that became an exodus during the tumultuous 1970s. More recently, a big chunk of New Yorkers moved out during the coronavirus pandemic, as people were literally dying in the streets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n