What Democrats can take from Zohran Mamdani's outreach efforts for 2026

A strong field operation — which includes volunteers knocking on doors and talking to voters in their homes — can tip the scales in a close election.

A strong field operation — which includes volunteers knocking on doors and talking to voters in their homes — can tip the scales in a close election. But Zohran Mamdani and his aides say their high-intensity canvassing effort was a difference-maker in both beating Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary and then preventing the former governor from mounting a comeback in the New York mayoral general election last month, which Mamdani won by about 9 points.

Mamdani’s field operation embraced risk and de-emphasized scripts in its strategy to reach voters directly, said eight campaign officials, volunteers and political observers, offering a potential road map for Democratic canvassing efforts in the midterm elections and beyond.

Mamdani and his campaign oriented his volunteers not only to juice turnout in favorable neighborhoods along the East River in Brooklyn and Queens, but also to persuade voters in majority-Black precincts who were seen as more skeptical of his upstart bid, as well as New Yorkers who backed Donald Trump in 2024 after, in many cases, having previously supported Democrats.

And while canvassers were armed with scripts detailing how to approach conversations, the campaign told volunteers they should feel free to share their personal stories with voters about why they were willing to do voter outreach on behalf of Mamdani, the 34-year-old self-described democratic socialist.

In total, more than 100,000 people volunteered for Mamdani’s campaign, knocking on more than 3.1 million doors, making 4.6 million calls and sending 2.7 million text messages to New Yorkers, his campaign said.