New York City Democratic primary voters went to the polls in June following eight straight months of decline in major crimes. New York Times journalist Ezra Klein posited that Zohran Mamdani could not have won if this was a “big crime and disorder election.” He went on to say, “I think that would have been a big problem for him, as he wasn’t well trusted on those issues.”

Klein’s take was wrong on two fronts. The first is the salience of crime to vote choice. New Yorkers’ perceptions about crime have long been at odds with statistics, especially on the subway.

While crime was not the top issue in the election, more than one in three voters ranked each crime and homelessness as a top issue facing New York City—just behind cost of living and housing costs but well ahead of healthcare, education, or anti-Semitism.

Second, Klein wrongly assumed that Mamdani’s stated approach to crime and safety would be a liability with voters. His thinking reflects age-old conventional political wisdom, among both New York Democrats and Republicans, that conflates voter concerns about crime with support for a “tough-on-crime” approach. 

Former Governor Andrew Cuomo entered the race believing he could win by tapping into fear of crime and describing a city mired in crisis that only he was able to fix. In contrast to Cuomo’s tale of fear, Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani’s opening salvo on crime connected public safety to “stable homes, good-paying work, and well-resourced neighborhoods.” He campaigned on concrete policy solutions such as mental health outreach and crisis response, expanding gun violence prevention, addressing hate crimes, and tackling homelessness. 

Largely unbacked by unions or other politicians in his run, Mamdani’s upset victory showed how far the New York political class is from where New York voters are on many issues—including his handling of crime and public safety. To better understand how these issues shaped the New York City Democratic primary election, Vera Action commissioned a one-of-a-kind exit poll of 1,136 actual voters about what they took to the ballot box on crime and public safety (crosstabs here) and analyzed ad spending and candidate platforms. Below are five key takeaways.

Vera Action’s exit poll showed that 75 percent of Democratic primary voters preferred to “fully fund things that are proven to create safe communities—like good schools, jobs, and affordable housing,” compared to only 25 percent of respondents who favored doing “more to get tough on crime.”

A “serious” approach was favored by 84 percent of voters ages 18-49; 70 percent of white voters; and more than 80 percent of Black, AAPI, and Hispanic or Latino/a voters. Even among older voters, a historically more moderate voting bloc, 67 percent of voters 50 and older favored a “serious” approach.

Previous research has found that voters prefer a “serious about safety” approach over a “tough” one—even when fears about crime are more likely to influence vote choice than in this primary election. For example, in Vera Action’s previous New York poll from December 2024, likely New York City Democratic primary voters ranked “making communities safe” on par with “jobs and the economy” and “cost of living” when asked which issues are important or very important to their vote. Despite crime ranking so high, 58 percent of those same respondents preferred a “serious about safety” approach over a “tough” one.

Mamdani’s singular focus on affordability went beyond traditional cost of living concerns to what it would take for New Yorkers who have built this city to afford to have a good life here. Safety was one of his campaign platform’s eight major issues related to affordability. Instead of discussing safety in a silo, Mamdani consistently linked safety to affordability—that higher costs and rising prices are connected to voters’ fears of a loss of stability and security.

Whether or not the caricature is fair, progressives have long been seen as silent on the issue of crime. In contrast, Mamdani spoke about safety early and often and with specificity on what he would do to bring down crime, increase case clearance rates, and the critical role that police play in addressing serious crime.

On the Plain English podcast, Mamdani said, “It comes back to . . . reclaiming the language of quality of life as a left-wing concern because it is often described as if it is somehow conservative. If we want to fight for the dignity of each and every person, and especially the working-class New Yorkers that are often forgotten . . . too often we’ve refused to even admit to inefficiencies or critiques or waste within the public sector, thinking that by doing so we open the critique from the right. But in actuality, our refusal to admit it is even more ammunition for the right.” 

And in an interview with Telemundo, he explained, “We need to actually deliver public safety and we need to aggressively pursue evidence-based solutions . . . [New Yorkers] want accountability, they want safety, they also want justice; these are things we can deliver together if we have a mayor who is actually focused on them.”

Despite Cuomo running as a “tough-on-crime” moderate and touting his signature proposal at every turn to add 5,000 more police officers to New York City’s streets, when asked who they trust more on the issue of crime and public safety, 44 percent of Democratic primary voters said Cuomo and 44 percent said Mamdani (12 percent said they were not sure). Mamdani won trust from AAPI and Hispanic or Latino/a voters by a margin of 40 and 9 percentage points, respectively, while Black voters trusted Cuomo over Mamdani on crime and safety by 18 points.

In a three-way engaged debate question, respondents were asked to compare and rank the policy platforms of three candidates on crime and safety: Andrew Cuomo, Brad Lander, and Zohran Mamdani. Cuomo’s crime platform was far more popular when it was associated with his name, yet the platform itself was preferred by only 16 percent of voters when names were not attached. The majority (58 percent) chose Mamdani’s platform when it was not attributed to Mamdani, while 27 percent chose Lander’s. But when candidates and their respective platforms were named, still 44 percent chose Mamdani’s, 39 percent chose Cuomo’s, and 17 percent chose Lander’s.

The overwhelming majority of Mamdani voters chose both the unnamed and named versions of his platform, while among Cuomo voters 64 percent chose the unnamed version of either Lander’s or Mamdani’s platforms when his name was not associated with it.

When asked which of the following statements about police do you support most, even if none is exactly right, a plurality (37 percent) chose “take the burden off police officers to solve every social problem so they can focus on serious crimes.” Supporting police and holding them accountable followed.

The primary candidates who pitched hiring more police or bolstering police numbers through retention and new shift assignments in their signature platform on policing missed where voters are on the issue. In contrast, Mamdani’s proposal to maintain the current NYPD ranks and let them focus on serious crime, while establishing a Department of Community Safety to respond to mental health crises, met voters where they are.

Not only was Mamdani’s policy proposal more in line with voters, but he talked about policing and his Department of Community Safety proposal early and often. On the Breakfast Club, which has millions of listeners, he explained that police officers are being asked to serve as mental health professionals and social workers instead of doing what they signed up to do—fight serious crime. His proposal for a Department of Community Safety would take the burden off police to do everything. In an interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, another outlet with a huge following, Mamdani explained the problem he is seeking to address: “[I]t’s part of why we see 200 officers leave the department every single month with about another quarter considering doing so. Because we’re not letting them do their actual jobs. And that’s part of our vision: let the police do the critical work that they do towards creating public safety, [and] let’s create a Department of Community Safety to have dedicated teams of mental health outreach workers and social workers in our subways responding to homelessness and the mental health crisis.”

His campaign released a detailed video about what the Department of Community Safety would do and how it would work, and secured favorable coverage about it in The New York Times—making the point that a similar successful program in Albuquerque, New Mexico, has responded to more than 100,000 calls for service for mental health and quality of life issues.

In contrast to taking the burden off police, support for more police and more funding for police lagged behind in the single digits.

Fix the City, a political action committee supporting Andrew Cuomo’s candidacy, spent $25 million on ads—including several that attacked Mamdani on crime, portraying him as a “dangerous” candidate who will lead to “more violent crime.” According to AdImpact, Mamdani’s opposition spent $6.8 million on crime attack ads, and Fix the City alone spent $5.2 million on ads referencing Mamdani’s previous statements about “defund the police.”

Again, conventional political wisdom assumes that “soft-on-crime” and “defund” attacks are a huge liability for a candidate. Yet Mamdani’s deft incorporation of safety as a key part of his platform for an affordable and liveable city, and his proactive and frequent mentions of the critical role of police and how his Department of Community Safety would lift the burden and help to reduce crime, likely helped to inoculate against these attacks.

Nor did Mamdani shy away from confronting the “defund” attacks head on. Instead of engaging in prolonged debate about the size of the police budget or the number of police officers, or promising to increase the size of the NYPD, he consistently clarified that he would not defund the police and then turned to the critical role that police play, his Department of Community Safety proposal, and the additional investments he would make as mayor on the subways and streets for a comprehensive approach to safety. For example, during the first official debate, when attacked for his previous support for defunding the police, Mamdani neither became defensive nor insisted he was tough on crime. Instead, he said the city must go “beyond the same ideas that we hear time and time again recycled by the same politicians,” and that we cannot expect the police “to respond to every failure of the social safety net.” In the final weeks of the campaign, when facing millions in opposition ad spending attacking him as “too dangerous” for New York City, Mamdani went on Subway Takes, a popular internet talk show, to humorously address the “defund” attacks and explain how he would work with the police and establish the Department of Community Safety.

The “defund” attacks in this election did not appear to have the zing that conventional political wisdom suggests they would.

Eighty-three percent of voters said that a candidate’s platform on “making communities safe and the right role for mental health treatment, social services, and police” is more important to their vote than their “history of support or opposition for more police funding, including any past statements on defunding the police.” Even with voting blocs that have highly favorable views of the police, a candidate’s policy proposals are more important than their past statements on “defund.” For example, only 20 percent of white voters said a candidate’s positions on defund were more important than their public safety policies, while only 10 percent of Black voters said the same.

The day after the primary, Brad Lander said on CNN, “I don’t think the line for the [Democratic] Party right now is between progressives and moderates. I think it’s between fighters and folders.” Mamdani’s approach to inoculating against “soft-on-crime” attacks was to not fold—but rather to fight for the vision of safety that he believes in. While other NYC Democratic primary mayoral candidates adopted some reform policies—such as Brad Lander’s proposal to end street homelessness for people with serious mental illness, Zellnor Myrie’s support for police accountability and crime prevention, Adrienne Adams’s endorsement of closing Rikers Island, and Andrew Cuomo’s full-throated defense of bail reform as necessary to overhaul an unjust and deadly system—none of them waged a full-on fight to convince New Yorkers that their approach to safety and justice was the winning one. 

The results in the New York City Democratic primary have implications nationally. Even with a more moderate electorate, a “serious about safety” approach wins. In Vera Action’s 2024 national exit poll, conducted after November 5, 2024, and in the aftermath of more than $1 billion spent on “tough-on-crime” ads, 53 percent of actual voters still preferred a “serious” approach compared to 47 percent who favored a “tough” one. In battleground states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, voters preferred the “serious” to the “tough” approach by an 11 point margin. In the upcoming Virginia gubernatorial election—a quintessential bellwether purple electorate—64 percent of the electorate favors a “serious” approach and 66 percent of independent voters do.

Other mayors too have had real success on a similar platform fighting for a comprehensive approach to safety over going tough on crime: Michelle Wu in Boston, where homicides  declined by 82 percent in 2024; Brandon Scott in Baltimore, which saw homicides falling to a historic low in April; and outgoing Mayor Mike Duggan in Detroit, a city that saw a 57-year low in shootings and homicides last year. 

It turns out that conventional political wisdom to go “tough” is wrong. Rather, a comprehensive approach to preventing crime, responding to crisis, and stopping violence is good policy—and good politics.