Posted by Leonard Steinberg on November 6th, 2013

Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio is talking today about how the City has given him a mandate to push his agenda forward because of his impressive winning margins. This may be so on the surface, but further analysis proves otherwise. So, Mayor-elect Mr. de Blasio, please consider the following:

• You won about 74% of the vote and Mr. Lhota won about 24% of the vote.
• Roughly 1 million New Yorkers voted: which means 75% of eligible New York voters did not vote.
• New York consists of roughly 8 million people: of those only about 4 million are eligible to vote, so only 12.5% of New Yorkers actually spoke.
• You appealed strongly to the Black and Hispanic communities, who came out in strong support of you: combined they comprise about 53% of New York: don’t forget that little minority no-one seems to acknowledge: Asians account for 12% of New York.

So whereas on the surface Mayor de Blasio may have certainly won a huge majority, in reality that ‘majority’ is a lot less impressive when only 12,5% of New Yorkers actually voted! With this in mind, it would be in the interests of Mr. de Blasio to NOT look at his victory as a mandate to dictate, but rather one to form consensus and govern from the middle. The extremes on the left and right have proven repeatedly that they are NOT good for the community in general.