'IT'S NICE TO BE RIGHT!'

The New Yorkers riding the high of his win. (And the ones who had no idea there was an election.)

- MADELINE LEUNG COLEMAN

ON ELECTION NIGHT, as the polls for New York's Democratic primary closed, Melissa Lozada-Oliva was crammed into a watch party at a bar in Gowanus, staring at news updates on a projector screen alongside a blue-and-gold crowd of white-knuckled locals desperate for Zohran Mamdani to win. Lozada-Oliva, a 32-year-old novelist and poet, had never canvassed for anyone before, but she spent the past few months door-knocking for Mamdani in her neighborhood of Crown Heights, moved by his message about a city everyone can afford. She had no idea what to expect. The bar was too loud to hear the news announcer. Numbers flashed on the screen. “And then those big letters of ANDREW CUOMO IS CONCEDING came and it was just—it was a zoo,” she said. “People were crying. Hugging strangers. It was like sports, if sports mattered.” (“No offense,” she added.)

The left isn’t used to this—winning. It's not even used to coming close. Watching Cuomo concede (and so quickly!) felt like a glitch, a prank, a football anyone could yank away. The win was being called the biggest upset in modern New York history. The next day, the cover of the