By: Arthur Popowitz

As New York City braces for Tuesday’s fiercely contested mayoral election, a new poll has sent shockwaves through the five boroughs. Nearly 800,000 residents — almost one in ten New Yorkers — say they will “definitely” leave the city if Democratic Socialist candidate Zohran Mamdani becomes mayor. The data, published by the Daily Mail and reported by Newsmax on Monday, paints a grim portrait of a city teetering on the edge of an economic and demographic exodus.

According to the J.L. Partners survey, conducted from October 23 to 26 among 500 registered voters, 9% of respondents declared they would “definitely” relocate if Mamdani wins, while another 25% said they would “consider” leaving — a potential combined outflow of nearly three million residents. With New York’s population hovering around 8.5 million, those numbers represent a staggering potential decline equivalent to the entire populations of Washington, D.C., Las Vegas, or Seattle vanishing overnight.

The Newsmax report underscored the historic implications of such an exodus, noting that the loss of nearly a million residents would devastate the city’s tax base, housing market, and social services — inflicting damage reminiscent of the fiscal crisis of the 1970s. Economists and real estate experts warn that even a fraction of those departures could cripple the city’s fragile post-pandemic recovery and accelerate a trend of middle- and upper-income flight already underway.

Perhaps the most consequential finding from the J.L. Partners poll, as reported by Newsmax, involves the city’s highest earners — those making more than $250,000 per year. Among this group, 7% said they would “definitely” leave under a Mamdani administration. That figure is not just symbolic; it is seismic.

According to the information provided in the Newsmax report, the top 1% of earners in New York are responsible for nearly half of all city income tax revenue. If even a fraction of those households relocate to lower-tax jurisdictions like Florida, North Carolina, or Tennessee — all of which emerged as top destinations in the survey — the financial repercussions for New York could be catastrophic.

“Mamdani’s proposed rent freeze and tax hikes have created a perfect storm of anxiety among property owners and high earners,” Newsmax reported. “For the city’s economic elite, the fear isn’t just ideological — it’s fiscal survival.”

Real estate professionals told Newsmax that wealthy residents have already begun to act preemptively. Apartments on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and in Tribeca — long regarded as bastions of economic stability — are quietly being listed by nervous owners. “These people are not thrilled about the possibility of Mamdani winning,” said New York realtor Jay Batra. “They don’t want to hear about Mamdani and the rent freeze he’s proposing.”

Batra added that even potential buyers are withdrawing from deals, unwilling to gamble on a market that could be reshaped by what they see as a radical redistribution agenda.

James Johnson, director of J.L. Partners, told Newsmax that the poll reflects deep demographic fissures within the city. “Older New Yorkers, Staten Islanders, and white voters are the most likely to say they would pack up and leave,” Johnson said, noting that anxiety was highest among those who have spent decades building financial and social roots in the city.

The pattern is strikingly familiar. During the pandemic, a similar wave of affluent flight to the Sunbelt and suburbs drained billions from New York’s economy, hollowed out its commercial corridors, and left entire neighborhoods struggling to recover. The Newsmax report observed that the prospect of a Mamdani administration — defined by anti-capitalist rhetoric and promises of sweeping rent controls — appears to have reignited those same fears.

The survey’s results also revealed that dissatisfaction is not limited to the wealthy. A broad cross-section of middle-class residents — including civil servants, retirees, and small-business owners — expressed unease about Mamdani’s platform, which emphasizes expanded welfare spending, higher corporate taxes, and an ambitious public transit overhaul funded by new levies on the city’s top earners.

“People are worried about affordability, crime, and competence,” Johnson told Newsmax. “There’s a real sense that the city is at a crossroads — that this election will determine whether it remains livable for working families or becomes a laboratory for left-wing experimentation.”

For decades, New York has depended on a delicate equilibrium: a diverse workforce supported by a high-tax base of affluent residents and corporations. But as Newsmax noted, that balance is under unprecedented strain. The city’s budget already faces multibillion-dollar shortfalls from declining commercial property values and outmigration of financial firms to Florida and Texas.

If Mamdani’s victory accelerates those trends, experts warn, the consequences could be dire and immediate. City agencies reliant on income and property tax revenues could face sweeping cuts. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, already staggering under debt, could see further service reductions. And social services — ironically, the very programs Mamdani has vowed to expand — could become financially unsustainable.

“Mamdani’s platform risks triggering a self-reinforcing cycle,” Newsmax reported. “As the wealthy flee and the tax base shrinks, the city will either have to cut services or raise taxes further, prompting even more residents to leave.”

This dynamic, sometimes called the “fiscal death spiral,” is not theoretical. Newsmax pointed to recent precedents in San Francisco and Chicago, where progressive fiscal policies coincided with rising crime, shrinking populations, and deteriorating infrastructure. “The parallels are unmistakable,” one economist told the outlet. “New York could become the next cautionary tale of ideological overreach.”

The J.L. Partners poll also revealed a cultural chasm dividing New Yorkers along ideological lines. While Mamdani’s supporters view him as a visionary reformer — a young, charismatic leader who champions equity and social justice — his detractors see him as an untested radical whose policies threaten the city’s economic foundation.

Newsmax reported that Mamdani’s pledge to make buses free, impose a rent freeze, and “tax the rich until they cry uncle” has galvanized progressive activists but alarmed moderates and independents. Many voters — particularly in Staten Island, Queens, and parts of Brooklyn — told pollsters they no longer recognize the Democratic Party that once balanced social compassion with fiscal realism.

“The fear is that a Mamdani victory will complete New York’s transformation into a one-party city dominated by ideological zeal,” Newsmax observed in its analysis. “And once that happens, it’s very hard to turn back.”

What the poll ultimately captures, the Newsmax report emphasized, is not just political polarization but a crisis of confidence in New York’s future. The idea that nearly 800,000 people are already planning to leave — with more than two million others contemplating it — speaks to a profound erosion of trust in local governance.

That disillusionment cuts across class and borough lines. For some, it is economic; for others, cultural or psychological. But the cumulative effect is the same: a once-proud city, long synonymous with ambition and possibility, now seems perilously close to repelling its own citizens.

“The flight of talent, capital, and confidence from New York would not just be a local story,” the Newsmax report concluded. “It would be a national tragedy — the unraveling of the American city that once defined aspiration itself.”

As Election Day approaches, the stakes could hardly be higher. A Mamdani victory, his critics warn, would not merely represent a shift in political direction. It would mark a watershed moment — the day when the world’s greatest city began, in earnest, to empty itself out.