If it was not already certain, we now know: housing affordability is the top issue driving the electorate. Derek Thompson described this month’s election results as a referendum on the “ affordability theory of everything ”. New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani comfortably won the mayoralty of the most significant city in the world on the back of an affordability-focused campaign.

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Mamdani campaigned on an affirmative message of hope and possibility, motivating a broad swath of voters to believe again in the nation’s largest city. In the process, he made the problem of housing affordability a central issue, but in some ways dangled contradictory solutions. On the one hand, Mamdani insisted on rent freezes for stabilized apartments, satiating the left-lea

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