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Gov. Hochul won with a mandate from voters. But what was the message?
By
Jon Campbell
Published Nov 9, 2026 at 6:00 a.m. ET
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Gov. Kathy Hochul/Flickr
By
Jon Campbell
Published Nov 9, 2026 at 6:00 a.m. ET
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New York Gov. Kathy Hochul scored the type of political victory on Election Day that typically comes with a mandate — but what message voters were trying to send depends on who you ask.
The Democratic governor topped her Republican opponent Bruce Blakeman by about 20 percentage points, or 1.2 million votes, tripling her margin of victory from the last time she ran in 2022. She increased her vote share in every single one of New York’s 62 counties, in red and blue areas alike, and won eight counties she lost four years ago — including Nassau, where Blakeman is county executive.
But what, exactly, does that result tell us about what voters are expecting from Hochul in her second full term? Everyone seems to have a different answer.
Christina Greer, a Fordham University political science professor, said the blue wave that swept the nation on Election Day — which saw Democrats win key races in traditionally Republican states — makes a New York-specific mandate difficult to define.
“I'm not sure if the governor has a mandate, and I think this goes for not just Kathy Hochul, but a lot of the Democrats who were successful on Tuesday,” she said. “I think we need to be careful as to: Is it a vote for Kathy Hochul, or is it a vote against Donald Trump?”
Hochul ran a campaign revolving around the cost of living.
She ran advertisements that touted the state’s free school meal program, her moratorium on data center construction and a round of energy rebate checks, which resulted in millions of payments of up to $200 landing in voters’ mailboxes shortly before Election Day.
Hochul’s campaign also focused on tying Blakeman to Trump, his friend and ally who headlined a rally in Syracuse just before voters started casting their ballots. Her ads frequently included a clip of Blakeman saying he would “never be disloyal” to the Republican president.
More than 60% of voters in New York view the president unfavorably, according to recent public opinion polls. Many voters blamed Trump for raising the price of gas through the war in Iran.
“ The Democrat message last night was basically, ’We’re not him,’” said Republican political consultant Mike Dawidziak. “And that message worked last night, but it’s not gonna work in two years.”
In 2018, the last midterm election with Trump in office, then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, defeated Republican Marc Molinaro by 23 percentage points.
A Marist University poll last month showed Trump was clearly on voters’ minds when they headed to the polls this time, too.
Among likely voters in New York, 47% said their vote in their local congressional race was mostly a vote against Trump, while 18% said it was mostly a vote for Trump. About a third of voters said Trump wasn’t much of a factor at all.
In that same poll, 41% of likely voters said they had a favorable impression of Hochul, compared to 51% unfavorable. (A Siena University poll the same week was more favorable to Hochul, with 51% saying they had a favorable view of her.)
Hochul said she believes her huge margin of victory says more about her than it does the Republican president.
At an annual post-election conference in Puerto Rico on Friday, the governor said the takeaway from her huge margin of victory is simple: New York voters support her policies and want her to continue on.
“They want me to keep fighting to deliver affordability for New Yorkers,” she said. “They want me to keep building more housing. They want me to focus on energy resiliency and focus on the threat of climate change. And the other major one is childcare.”
Hochul, a centrist, and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist whose 2025 victory marked a win for the left wing of the Democratic Party, have jointly implemented a major expansion of childcare in New York City and state that will persist into 2027.
Hochul endorsed Mamdani after he won the mayoral primary last year, and Mamdani, in turn, hit the campaign trail for Hochul, urging his supporters — many of whom are younger than Hochul’s base — to hit the polls.
Grace Mausser, cochair of the NYC Democratic Socialists of America, said Mamdani’s support of Hochul clearly paid off for the governor. She pointed to increased voter turnout in parts of Brooklyn and Queens that heavily supported the mayor in 2025.
She said Hochul would be wise to remember that when lawmakers return to the state Capitol in January. The governor will face renewed pressure from the left to raise income taxes on the wealthy — a move the governor has resisted.
“Taxing the rich isn’t just a DSA position, it’s a centrist position, too,” Mausser said, pointing to polls that have shown broad support for the issue.
Liz Benjamin, managing director of New York public affairs for the consulting firm Marathon Strategies, wrote an op-ed making the case that Hochul’s victory is a mandate to continue her brand of moderate politics and governing, rather than tack left.
She said Hochul’s margin shows that her win wasn’t a matter of progressive voters “holding their nose and voting for her.”
“I just don't think that that's in fact the case,” Benjamin said in an interview. “I think that this is because she actually made a viable argument to people and had a record of accomplishment and grew into the role.”
Bryan Lesswing, a former senior adviser to Hochul who now is a senior vice president at consulting firm SKDK, said the governor’s campaign excelled in appealing to voters with varying viewpoints.
“Her performance really shows, I think, a playbook for Democrats on the big tent politics that we're all talking about here that we need to shift toward, especially in the wake of [Trump’s win in] 2024,” he said.
Includes reporting by Walter Wuthmann
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Jon Campbell
Jon Campbell covers the New York State Capitol for WNYC and Gothamist. Prior to that, he covered the Capitol for more than a decade for the USA TODAY Network. He has twice earned the Walter T. Brown Memorial Award, an honor given annually by the Legislative Correspondents Association alumni for outstanding state government coverage. Jon grew up in the Buffalo area and graduated from the University at Albany. Got a tip? Email Jon at [email protected] or Signal at JonCampbellNY.90.
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