Zohran Mamdani, a complete unknown 10 months before the New York mayoral elections, became his winner. And he did it against the odds, without money and without the powers in favor.
Much has been written about the keys to its success: a clear message focused on basic needs – rent freezes, free buses, universal childcare… –, an army of 100,000 volunteers coordinated to deliver this message, door to door, to three million homes, and a brilliant social media strategy.
But it wasn’t just thanks to this. Behind it there was a political strategy that took as a basis the authenticity of today’s mayor to build a certain political story.
Young, immigrant, Muslim and a democratic socialist
Mamdani’s campaign was based on a clear commitment to authenticity focused on his most intimate and personal traits: he is a young Muslim immigrant (born in Uganda) and considers himself a democratic socialist, a term traditionally taboo on the American political scene.
Instead of distancing himself from all these labels, he embraced them to build an authentic personality and create a believable narrative without running away from what is, thus building trust.
In politics, authenticity is often talked about as a personal characteristic: someone is natural, spontaneous, genuine. But authenticity is not just a casual attitude, but a strategic decision that turns a way of being into a communicative architecture that is worked on, built and cared for.
In his case, he took advantage of it to become a kind of social media content creator who, instead of giving institutional messages, used the style that characterizes those platforms applied to his campaign.
Short videos, clear and direct language (in different languages), visits to grocery stores, conversations with taxi drivers, interviews or collaborations with influencers…He used everyday life, the stories of people on the street and the everyday scenarios of many people as a setting and narrative resource.
In this way, he managed to connect emotionally with the different communities of New Yorkers, making many of them see themselves represented in the campaign and perceive Mamdani as “one of ours.”
Or, as he said Immanuel Kantmanaging to create “the universal feeling of feeling part of something”, of being part of something.
Storytelling: the construction of a story in politics
But in politics there is nothing casual. And, although there is a real starting point (personality and authenticity of the candidate), there is another part of narrative construction.
Storytelling is a tool that has been used in advertising to transmit messages and values, in education to teach through morals, and in politics to generate images that consolidate concepts and provoke emotions.
As the professor of political communication points out Toni Aira in his book mythologiststhe passion of the stories allows us to generate a strong connection with the public. Hence, the image that politicians project is carefully designed with the intention of exciting, evoking memories, activating deep ideas and generating adhesion.
Nowadays, in many cases, looking has replaced thinking, because a strong symbol is more effective than a long argument. In this way, what counts is no longer what a politician says, but the image he projects, his “personal myth” before the masses.
The objective is for citizens to connect with the politician in a passionate way, for him to explain something that interests him, that amuses him, that surprises him, that he understands him, that he likes, but above all, that it involves him personally. And stories are a perfect vehicle for this.
Christian Salmon, writer and author of books on the subject such as Storytelling: The machine for making stories and formatting mindsstates that this narrative technique is a weapon of mass distraction, a way of using narration to convince and mobilize opinion.
For Salmon, electoral campaigns are duels of stories in which 4 elements intervene, which we can clearly identify in Mamdani’s campaign:
–Storyline (central story): explain a story capable of forming the candidate’s narrative identity. In this case, young outsider with community roots and commitment to accessibility policies that represents change and an alternative to establishment.
–Framing (discursive frame): frame the candidate’s ideological message through a coherent language register and creating metaphors. Mamdani’s message was framed by people’s basic needs (you can’t live in New York), not abstract economic rhetoric, and he used metaphors like “people power” to give symbolic meaning to collective participation.
–Timing (timing): inscribe the story in the time of the campaign, managing the rhythms and narrative tension throughout it. Mamdani built momentum as the campaign progressed, going from being the “candidate outsider” to be “the candidate who can win.” In addition, once he won, he activated his transition website The Work Starts Nowso that the campaign history would be connected to the future government history (continuous story).
–Networking (networking): create a community online and in the field. Provide a contagious environment capable of capturing the public’s attention. He did it with an army of 100,000 enthusiastic volunteers charged with generating energy and contagion to mobilize the vote and create conversation.
The campaign worked, in the words of the political journalist Makena Kellylike a kind of “fandom political” – a community of passionate fans who share a deep interest in a specific issue – where Mamdani was not only a candidate, but a character with followers who created memes and proactive content. This turned the campaign into a participatory cultural movement, not just an electoral one.
Narratives are neither good nor bad, but they exist
The use of storytellingpersonal and community narration, the use of networks and cultural mobilization moves far away from the traditional model of posters, rallies and formal speeches and takes political campaigns to a terrain in which image, narrative and emotional proximity count as much (or more) than pure and simple ideological discourse.
On the other hand, Christian Salmon points out that we live in a political and social climate where narratives become powerful tools to create polarization and dividing society in opposing groups. Narratives that reinforce conflicts instead of promoting dialogue, such as those represented by Trumpism.
Therefore, it is important to be aware that seduction and persuasion are neither good nor bad in and of themselves; It all depends on how they are used. They can serve both to influence positively and to manipulate.
Understanding how narratives influence our view of the world is essential to being able to unmask manipulation and, at the same time, take advantage of those same tools to communicate effectively and persuasively.
Jordi Caballé MayProfessor of creativity, storytelling and creative political communication, UOC – Open University of Catalonia
This article was originally published in The Conversation. Read the original.
