Tuesday’s New York City primary contest saw major victories for progressive and Democratic Socialist candidates, solidifying the rise of the city’s left-leaning political power base. Meanwhile, in San Francisco, lefties are licking their wounds after an early June primary contest saw near-total defeat for them as progressive power is on life support at City Hall.

The contrasting results, occurring just weeks apart, reveal two of the country’s most influential cities are charting considerably different political paths. Last year, New York City elected its first-ever democratic socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani. His preferred congressional candidates — Darializa Avila Chevalier, Brad Lander, and Claire Valdez — all saw victories on June 23. In San Francisco, a corporate-friendly, technocratic mayor was elected in 2024, Daniel Lurie, and he, too, saw all of his priorities succeed during the June 2 primary. That includes the failure of Prop. D, an increase in business taxes championed by labor interests. 

The divergence reveals a central tension in urban Democratic politics in the U.S.: whether affordability anxiety pushes working-class voters left toward democratic socialism, pushing for an overhaul of the economy, or toward technocratic moderates promising competence and stability. The answer, it turns out, depends heavily on demographics as much as ideology.

“Everybody is looking at New York with a little bit of envy,” said Aditya Bhumbla, former co-chair of San Francisco’s Democratic Socialists chapter. “We want that here.”

Nationally, the country has always had a perception that San Francisco is a hotbed of lefty politics. But the reality is a lot more complicated. The last progressive mayor was Art Agnos, who served from 1988 to 1992. In more recent years, the city saw a major backlash to progressivism, with voters ousting three school board members in 2022 who were perceived as too far to the left. The same year, voters booted District Attorney Chesa Boudin over his progressive views on criminal justice. In the 2024 election, progressive candidate Aaron Peskin placed third, while moderate candidates took over the Board of Supervisors. 

Why the two cities have diverged so drastically in their politics comes down to a number of factors: demographic trends, how the issue of affordability impacts both cities, and structural differences in the way elections are conducted, political observers told The Standard. They warned that the comparison is not a perfect one: San Francisco’s population is a 10th of New York City’s, and it’s also a sixth of the land size of the East Coast city, which features five boroughs, creating a much more diverse voter base when it comes to class and race.

The first critical difference is income. Over the last decade, San Francisco’s median household income grew more than twice as fast as New York City’s — 37.5% compared to 15.2%, according to U.S. Census data — leaving the two cities at $150,600 and $85,980, respectively. 

“I think that explains a ton of it,” said Daniel Anderson, a political consultant who worked on progressive candidate Natalie Gee’s unsuccessful June campaign for District 4, about the income differences. “Just in terms of people’s sensibilities, the things they care about, the things they don’t care about. Those types of [working-class] people are not in [San Francisco] as much anymore.”

There are also racial differences. “San Francisco is whiter, less black, and less Latino, and that is going to skew it rightward,” said Lincoln Mitchell, who splits his time between New York City and San Francisco as a Columbia University politics professor.

Where those lower income people move to also matters for the electorate. Mitchell said there are many more options for working-class people to move within New York’s five boroughs compared to the Bay Area’s limited geography. 

“The difference in San Francisco is you get pushed out of the city,” Mitchell said. “You’re in Oakland, and then you’re not voting anymore.”

• San Francisco progressives got their clocks cleaned this election

He also said that the way the two cities conduct their elections creates a higher possibility of more left-leaning candidates succeeding in New York City. 

The East Coast metropolis uses a closed primary system, meaning that only registered Democrats can vote in the Democratic primary. Since the city is majority Democrat, the Republican primary is essentially ceremonial, and the Democrat who wins is all but guaranteed to prevail in the November general election.

In San Francisco, the races are nonpartisan and party affiliation doesn’t limit who you can vote for. Mitchell explained that in the case of mayoral elections, a Republican or Independent voter in San Francisco can help push a moderate candidate like Lurie to victory. 

“Neither of these mayors would have been elected under the electoral system in the other city,” Mitchell said about Mamdani and Lurie. 

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Some blame the lack of progressive success in San Francisco on how moderates have shaped their messaging — an effective one, they admit. 

“The moderate faction in the city did a better job of painting a story for why the city is currently dysfunctional,” said Saikat Chakrabarti, a progressive former aide to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who came in third during San Francisco’s June congressional primary. “That’s why their version is winning.” 

He described the moderates’ platform as a form of “reactionary politics.”

“That tends to work,” he said. “Blaming progressives for the failures of the city: We’re too compassionate. We’re already taxing everyone too high.”

Chakrabarti added that the city’s existing progressive network — that includes his opponent Supervisor Connie Chan, whom he trailed behind in third place — makes it harder for an insurgent style of politics like his to make inroads. A centimillionaire who made his fortune as an early employee of the technology company Stripe, Chakrabarti ran a populist campaign that leaned on affordability and taxing the rich. 

“In San Francisco, there is more of an institutional progressive establishment,” he said.“There’s the moderate establishment, and then there’s the institutionalized progressives. I would argue that it has been hard for progressives to run on a change message because they are part of the establishment.” 

Others say the amount of money aimed against progressive causes — most recently from technology interests — has stymied their success. 

The dueling tax battle in June saw $6.6 million raised for a business-backed ballot measure initiative, Prop. C, against the labor-backed Overpaid CEO Tax, Prop. D, which brought in half the amount of donations. Lurie’s circle of donors also forked over $1.8 million to a PAC called SF Believes, ensuring an uphill battle for the mayor’s opponents vying for Districts 2 and 4, both of whom lost. 

“When you look at a city of our size and you look at how much is spent by tech and real estate, it’s obvious that this is a disproportionate priority for them to control and move [the city] in a more conservative direction,” said Dean Preston, one of the first Democratic Socialists elected to the Board of Supervisors in decades in 2019 who lost his seat in 2024. “We are really the epicenter of tech money in politics.”

There are signs that some pockets of progressive politics may be seeing a rise in the city. San Francisco’s DSA former co-chair Bhumbla said membership has seen a big uptick since Mamdani’s primary election in June 2025, from 900 members to 1,300 today. (It’s still only a slice of what NYC’s chapter boasts (opens in new tab) at over 13,000 members as of December.) 

But what Bhumbla believes could push San Francisco’s progressives into victory is the same message Mamdani ran on: housing affordability. Efforts are already underway as SF’s DSA chapter gathers signatures for a ballot measure this coming November that would raise money for affordable housing. The time is ripe for a housing affordability message, Bhumbla said, as rents have skyrocketed in the wake of San Francisco’s artificial intelligence boom.

“The left in the city should have a clear positive answer on how to bring down rent,” they said. “Especially when the moderates want rent to go up to stimulate the economy.”