Zohran Mamdani’s Campaign Figured Out How to Channel Fandom

Zohran Mamdani’s New York City mayoral campaign set a new standard for how Democrats can communicate online.

It’s this digital savviness and authentic engagement with social media platforms to which pundits across the political spectrum have attributed to Mamdani’s triumphant and decisive win Tuesday night. From the start, his team outclassed his opponents online, publishing highly-produced videos that reached massive audiences.

But that’s only half of the story. Much of the content about Mamdani online isn’t just coming from his campaign, or the dozens of political influencers invited to cover it. It’s come from his fans.

For the last few months, feeds have been filled with fancams, fan art, and videos created not just with Mamdani, but for him. This form of participatory online fandom has traditionally been reserved for celebrities and musicians like Taylor Swift or K-pop idols. The young voters who came out in support of Mamdani in droves this week grew up engaging with their favs online in these ways, establishing something incredibly rare for the 34-year-old mayor-elect—a fandom.

“They are using their experiences from online fandom to do politics,” Dr. Ashley Hinck, an associate professor at Xavier University who teaches digital media and online communication. “Those are the skills to engage with culture and that means those are the skills we use to engage with politics.”

The Mamdani campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This fandom doesn’t look like average political organizing. Online, clips of Mamdani speaking at rallies and with influencers get remixed into tight video posts set to Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind,” songs from the Broadway musical “Hamilton,” or Charli xcx’s “Brat.” Digital artists have posted videos of them drawing Mamdani in their own styles. Mamdani’s own campaign quips, like when he instructed opponent Andrew Cuomo on how to pronounce his last name, have been edited into campaign anthems.

Unlike many politicians online as of late, the Mamdani campaign’s official social media presence avoided AI-generated content and the focus on popular audio trends, becoming a rare source of substance in slop-filled feeds. While other Democratic officials post online to manufacture authenticity with voters, Mamdani, voters say, simply shows up. He uses social media with the same seriousness he brings to issues like housing and affordability. This approach provides his audience with something tangible that they can engage with online in their own language, creating a community around Mamdani that exists online as well as real life.

“He’s maintained utmost professionalism throughout the campaign, but he lets the fun swirl around him,” says Ravi Mangla, national press secretary for the progressive Working Families Party which essentially endorsed Mamdani. “He encourages that culture around him, while he himself remains kind of laser focused on politics, on this campaign, and on the real issues that people are facing.”

While the Mamdani campaign invested heavily in creating its own slick content that focused on the issues, it also partnered with countless other creators based in New York City and across the country. Often, the creators themselves were already eager to collaborate with Mamdani, making the interaction more communal instead of purely transactional. In doing so, the campaign expanded its own reach online while also feeding the fandom machine.

Lauren Kapp, a digital strategist on the Kamala Harris campaign, tells WIRED that “a large portion of this is just the sheer accessibility of being able to clip Zohran in a way that we haven’t really seen with most candidates before.”

For Democrats wanting to repeat the magic, simply posting won’t be enough. Mamdani’s fandom and excited voters transcended the internet and into the real world as well. Last week, a handful of creators joined Mamdani at an event with a local senior center. There, influencers mixed with elderly voters, painting with watercolors, drinking wine, and discussing politics.

“I think I got invited to like make political content,” Christian Divyne, a TikTok creator with more than 700,000 followers, said in a video at the event posted to the platform last week. “I just did the paint and sip.” (Divyne later conducted a brief interview with Mamdani where he asked how his audience could encourage their families and friends to go out and vote in the election.)

In August, the campaign invited New Yorkers out for a scavenger hunt where they solved a series of clues by traveling across the city’s boroughs. The campaign sponsored meetups at bars where some of its nearly 100,000 volunteers could debrief after long days of doorknocking or cold-calling.

“Doing social media well is about clicking the right buttons or posting at the right time or using the right phrases for the SEO,” says Hinck. “But fandom is about building a community that cares about values.”

This fandom, both online and off, will be one of Mamdani’s most valuable assets when he’s officially sworn in as mayor. Campaign cycles end, but fan communities endure. More importantly, they participate, fundraise, and come to the defense of the people they stan.