If all goes well, and your columnist is really hoping that it does go well, the world’s most famous city will soon be won and run by a man with a Gujarati father and a Punjabi mother. Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic Party’s nomination in June and, on 4 November, will likely win the general election to become New York’s mayor. (Early voting began today, 26 October.)

What I wanted to focus on was his campaign and how he came out on top. In January this year, he was polling at 1 per cent, but by June had won 43 per cent of the primary (the election that decides who will represent the Democratic Party in the general) and now polls show him at 50 per cent in an expanded electorate of the entire city. How did this happen? Americans refer to such analysis as punditry; let us indulge in it.

First, take a look at the city’s demographics. New York has 350,000 millionaires and 123 billionaires, as might be expected in the metro that hosts Wall Street. But one fourth of its population lives in poverty, as defined by  the city. That definition — a family of four surviving on $47,000 or less a year — encompasses more than 20 lakh New Yorkers.

Mamdani’s starting point in his campaign was to focus on this problem of affordability. This went against conventional wisdom and polling, which showed that crime and safety were top priorities for........

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