Online Islamophobia spiked sharply in the immediate aftermath of Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary, new research has found.
The 33-year-old assembly member, a Muslim democratic socialist, defeated former Governor Andrew Cuomo by 56% to 44% in the final round of ranked choice voting, marking a watershed moment for the Democratic establishment. Within hours of his win however, Mamdani became the target of coordinated online attacks that framed his faith, ideology, and heritage as threats to public life, according to the Center for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH).
Islamophobic Posts Shared Over 8 Million Times in Days Following Mamdani’s Win
The study by CSOH, titled Digital Hate, Islamophobia, Zohran Mamdani, and NYC’s Mayoral Primaryand shared exclusively with TIME, tracked 6,669 posts mentioning Mamdani and related themes between June 13-30. The posts generated 419.2 million total engagements—including views, likes, shares, and comments.
“What we’ve witnessed was not just criticism of his policies,” notes Raqib Naik, Executive Director at the CSOH. “It was a coordinated multi-platform surge of anti-Muslim hate, ideological fear mongering, and nativist exclusion.”
The surge was immediate. From June 13-23, hate-related posts about Mamdani averaged between 56-264 per day. On June 24, the day of the primary, that number jumped to 899 posts. By June 25, it had exploded to 2,173 posts in a single day.
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