With election days away, Mamdani turns canvassing operation into high gear [View all]

NEW YORK — Zohran Mamdani’s army of volunteers isn’t letting up as their leader enters the final days of a grueling battle to become New York City’s next mayor.

Collectively, his network has already knocked on millions of doors, sent more than a million text messages and made millions of phone calls. And in the final days of what has become a bitterly contested general election, they are ramping up their efforts as the campaign pumps resources into in-person interactions.

“People are definitely persuadable. You start out with more folks who are undecided,” Tascha Van Auken, the campaign’s field director, told POLITICO. “If you talk to canvassers they will give you anecdotal examples of that. And you can see it when you look at field app data.”

Get-out-the-vote efforts are crucial for any campaign, especially to get would-be voters to the polls as Election Day looms. Should the 34-year-old democratic socialist win the race, as polling projects, much of the credit will go to his 95,000-strong volunteer network and the campaign staff managing them. Andrew Cuomo, who is running as an independent after losing to Mamdani in the Democratic primary, and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa have their own operations humming in high gear. Neither, however, took POLITICO up on its request to embed with door knockers.


https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/31/with-election-days-away-mamdani-turns-canvassing-operation-into-high-gear-00630797