I have worked with a number of very successful candidates and politicians. The one really invaluable skill they all had in common was that they understood basic math. They knew that two plus two often leads to victory, and that two minus one — or three — usually leads to defeat. Addition, subtraction, division. Simple.

Unless, to paraphrase a line from “Top Gun,” “Your ego is writing checks your body can’t cash.”

There is no doubt that many New York City residents — as well as countless people around the country and world who now fear for that iconic city’s future — have been shaken by a recent Siena College poll showing that far-left socialist Zohran Mamdani leads the race to become the next mayor by 19 points over his next-closest opponent, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Behind them are Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa with 12 percent and incumbent Mayor Eric Adams with 7 percent.

Mamdani has the gift of basic math working massively in his favor. In this particular case, division. Without doing a thing, the cliché “divide and conquer” has been the most important campaign strategy in his quiver. Other than offering the........

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