A New York Times, Siena University poll released with less than 50 days before the midterms shows New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani carrying a higher favorable rating than Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez among likely voters, a gap that should worry Democrats banking on her national star power.
Mamdani, the self-described Democratic socialist who rose from the New York City Council to Gracie Mansion, posted a 38 percent favorable rating against 33 percent unfavorable in the survey of slightly more than 1,500 likely voters conducted September 8, 13. Ocasio-Cortez, the four-term congresswoman from the same ideological lane, managed only 30 percent favorable, and her unfavorable number sat at 41 percent, eight points higher than Mamdani's.
The margin of error was 2.9 percentage points, meaning the eight-point favorability gap between the two progressive figures falls well outside statistical noise. For a congresswoman who has not ruled out a 2028 presidential bid, the numbers amount to a cold reality check delivered by her own party's most respected polling partnership.
The demographic breakdowns, reported by USA TODAY, tell a sharper story than the topline numbers alone. Mamdani drew 41 percent favorable among women and 35 percent among men. His unfavorable rating among women was just 23 percent, nearly half the 43 percent unfavorable he earned from men.
Ocasio-Cortez fared worse on both sides of the ledger. She posted 32 percent favorable among women and 27 percent among men. A majority of male likely voters, 51 percent, viewed her unfavorably, and a third of women did too.
Put plainly: Mamdani is nine points more popular with women than Ocasio-Cortez, and he carries eight points less disapproval from men. For a politician whose brand was built on grassroots energy and viral social-media moments, those are stubborn numbers to spin.
Age breakdowns reinforce the pattern. Mamdani's strongest support came from voters aged 18, 29, where he hit 51 percent favorable, a majority. He held 49 percent among voters 30, 44, dropped to 37 percent among those 45, 64, and fell to 26 percent among seniors 65 and older.
Ocasio-Cortez's best age group was 30, 44, at 43 percent favorable. Among the youngest voters, the cohort most associated with her political rise, she managed only 35 percent. She matched Mamdani's floor among seniors at 26 percent and scraped 25 percent among voters 45, 64.
The congresswoman who once embodied millennial progressive energy now trails a relatively new mayor among the very voters she claims to champion. That trajectory matters if she intends to mount a serious White House campaign. Her odds in the 2028 Democratic nomination race have been climbing in betting markets, but favorable-unfavorable numbers like these suggest the broader electorate is not keeping pace with the speculation.
Mamdani led among non-White voters broadly, posting 47 percent favorable compared to Ocasio-Cortez's 26 percent in the same category. Among Black likely voters, Mamdani earned 46 percent favorable to her 37 percent. Among White voters, he led 38 percent to 27 percent.
Ocasio-Cortez did hold one demographic advantage: Hispanic likely voters gave her a 49 percent favorable rating, well above Mamdani's 37 percent in the same group. It was her single strongest showing across every demographic slice in the poll.
Still, a Democratic socialist who built her career on multiracial coalition politics should not be trailing a fellow progressive across nearly every racial and ethnic category. Sen. Ted Cruz has warned that Democrats are handing their party to figures like Ocasio-Cortez and Mamdani. The poll suggests voters may be sorting between the two on their own terms, and the congresswoman is not winning that contest.
Beyond the head-to-head favorability comparison, the Times-Siena poll found Democrats leading Republicans 51 percent to 43 percent on the generic congressional ballot among likely voters. That eight-point margin, if it holds through Election Day, would represent a significant headwind for Republican candidates in competitive districts.
The poll also tested which party voters trust more on three major issues. Democrats led on health care, 60 percent to 36 percent. They led on immigration, 52 percent to 45 percent. And they led on the cost of living, 51 percent to 43 percent.
Those immigration numbers deserve scrutiny. Republicans have spent years building an advantage on border security and enforcement, and a seven-point deficit on the broader immigration question among likely voters signals either a messaging failure or a polling sample that skews toward blue-state respondents. The poll's geographic scope was not explicitly defined in the reporting, which makes the generic-ballot and issue-trust findings harder to evaluate at face value.
Meanwhile, internal Democratic divisions have not disappeared. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has faced caucus revolts over members breaking ranks, a reminder that the party's apparent polling strength masks real fractures beneath the surface.
The poll found that a majority of likely voters disapprove of Trump's handling of every major issue tested, including tariffs and the war with Iran. The specific disapproval percentages on those individual issues were not detailed in the reporting, leaving the severity of the numbers open to interpretation.
What is clear is that the poll's architects chose to test issues, tariffs, Iran, health care, cost of living, immigration, that cut across both parties' vulnerabilities. The results on the Democratic side of the ledger look strong in the topline. But topline generic-ballot leads have collapsed before, and issue-trust advantages do not always translate into seat gains when individual candidates carry unfavorable ratings as high as Ocasio-Cortez's 41 percent.
Ocasio-Cortez's political setbacks are not limited to polling. Her past public claims have sometimes outrun the facts, contributing to the kind of credibility erosion that shows up in unfavorable numbers over time.
Mamdani and Ocasio-Cortez share an ideological label, a city, and a political generation. They do not share a favorability profile. The mayor is above water, 38 percent favorable, 33 percent unfavorable, a net positive of five points. The congresswoman is deeply underwater, 30 percent favorable, 41 percent unfavorable, a net negative of eleven points.
That sixteen-point net-favorability gap between two politicians from the same wing of the same party, measured by the same poll at the same moment, is not a rounding error. It suggests that voters are distinguishing between the person who governs a city and the person who performs on cable news and social media. Executive responsibility, even in a city as chaotic as New York, may be granting Mamdani a credibility that Ocasio-Cortez's congressional tenure has not.
Progressive Democrats watching the 2028 landscape should take note. Progressive candidates have won recent primaries by leaning into cultural fights, but winning a primary and winning broad favorability are different exercises entirely. Ocasio-Cortez's numbers suggest the latter remains elusive.
When more voters dislike you than like you by double digits, the problem is not messaging. It is the product.
