NEW YORK — Mayor Zohran Mamdani called Tuesday’s Democratic sweep a “referendum on politics at large across this country” in which his fellow progressive politicians helped stir up the blue wave that crashed down across the United States.

“It speaks to the fact that this entire country is ready for a politics that means something to their lives and to their struggles,” he said at City Hall on Wednesday. “And what we saw Democrats running on across the country was an ambition for what government could do as opposed to a sense that our job is simply to describe working people’s struggles. Our job is to deliver on those struggles.”

Speaking to the crowd at Gov. Hochul’s re-election party just minutes before the polls closed on Tuesday, Mamdani framed the Midterms as an inflection point for the Democratic Party as it’s struggled to find its footing in the Trump era — and took partial credit for it, saying the movement found its start with his own progressive grassroots campaign.

As Tuesday night drew on, a massive blue tsunami swept the nation, with Democrats netting historic gains in both the Senate and the House, flipping seats in typically red states like Texas, to win a majority that will put President Trump on his heels and give the left wing greater control over the agenda in Washington. Some election results were still being counted on Wednesday.

In New York, a class of progressive leaders, including socialist insurgents Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez and progressive lawmaker Brad Lander, will head to Congress — coming as the Democratic Party faces a pre-2028 reckoning.

With their victories secured, Mamdani wants to see Democrats fulfill their promises to the voters.

“(We need to put our) foot on the gas,” he said Wednesday. “This is the moment where we are seeing people across this country vote for a politics that will mean something. For a long time, politics has felt like a hobby only some people can afford. We want politics to mean the deliverance of dignity into working people’s lives.”

Nationally, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed’s victory in Michigan has particularly resonated with Mamdani. El-Sayed, who will be the nation’s first Muslim senator, ran on a populist platform that emphasized workers’ rights and hiking taxes on billionaires.

“I have to say that his election is one that means so much to so many,” Mamdani said. “And to see that victory in the face of all that he had to reckon with over the course of that campaign, whether in terms of the extraordinary amount of money spent to oppose him or the racism and slander that he was met with on a daily basis, it is incredibly exciting to see as he said last night, that the good guys won.”

While the mayor hasn’t typically actively supported out-of-state candidates, he attended a fundraiser in the Michigan candidate’s support and publicly voiced praise for El-Sayed, including after Rep. Haley Stevens made a last-minute reversal by pulling her support for El-Sayed and instead backing his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers.

“The fact that states like South Carolina, Kansas and Iowa are even in question speaks to the fact that this entire country is ready for a politics that means something in people’s lives,” Mamdani said. “The American people want change they can feel in their wallets.”

Tuesday’s results contrast not just with 2024, but also the 2022, when New York helped Republicans net a majority in the House. In that cycle, the governor’s race also came down to the wire, with Republican candidate Lee Zeldin just six points behind her in the deep-blue state.

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