Most Jewish New Yorkers—58%—think that Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York City, is doing a poor job, while 32% approve of his job performance and 10% weren’t sure, according to a survey from the Jewish Majority.

Mercury Group, which conducted the poll and surveyed 664 Jewish adults who voted in November in the New York City mayoral election, found that 84% of respondents support the city passing a law creating barrier zones around the doors of houses of worship to prevent harassment and intimidation of worshipers.

The zones would allow protests 25 feet away from entrances and exits. Just 7% of those surveyed oppose the idea. Mamdani signed the bill, which passed the New York City Council with a veto-proof majority, into law in late April. He nixed an almost identical law about schools.

Each of the 664 respondents self-identifies as Jewish. The survey was conducted between Feb. 17 and 28, about six weeks into Mamdani’s mayoralty.

The city’s first Muslim mayor, Mamdani is a longtime anti-Israel activist, who has proven a divisive figure in the city with 1 million Jews—the largest Jewish population of any American city.

The mayor has said that he would have the Israeli prime minister arrested in the Big Apple, and his spokeswoman said that synagogues violate international law when they host pro-Israel events.

Hours into moving into Gracie Mansion, Mamdani dispensed with his predecessor’s executive orders, including those designed to protect Jews, and he appointed a leader of the mayoral office to fight Jew-hatred that has drawn extensive criticism from many Jewish leaders.

Jewish New Yorkers have a range of opinions on almost every topic, including the mayor, but the new survey of voters shows consensus on some things.

From revoking the city’s policy against boycotting Israeli products to vetoing the City Council “buffer zone” bill around schools to, last week, posting a city public service announcement video with a city official wearing a keffiyeh, the mayor’s decisions have drawn criticism from many mainstream Jewish leaders.

In an unusual rebuke, 11 Jewish groups, including some of the nation’s largest, said that they were “deeply disappointed” that he vetoed the school buffer bill.

The new survey states that its findings are “very clear.”

“The rise of antisemitism and the need for adequate community safety are chief concerns, and ‘anti-Zionism’ is largely viewed as wholesale opposition to a Jewish state,” it states. “Even among critics of the Israeli government, there is overwhelming support for Israel’s existence as a Jewish state, and even among the Jewish voters who supported Mamdani in the general election, the majority do not stand with him on the more extreme positions related to Israel and Palestine.”

An election day CNN exit poll suggested that 32% of Jewish voters chose Mamdani. The new survey suggests a different picture, according to Jonathan Schulman, executive director of Jewish Majority, which he launched in 2024.

“We found that 26% voted for him, not 32 %. That’s a quarter, not a third,” Schulman told JNS. Those who voted for Mamdani did so “in spite of his anti-Zionism, not because of it,” he added.

Schulman, who created Jewish Majority after 18 years at AIPAC, sought to launch a counterweight to views, which had been marginal but appeared to gain traction, with Mamdani inviting members of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice and Jewish Voice for Peace into his administration.

Mamdani has said that he opposed Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.

Even many of those who voted for the mayor disagree with him, per the poll, which suggests that 60% of respondents support the idea of a two-state solution if it would end the Israel-Palestinian conflict, while 26% oppose the concept,

A clear majority, 73%, support New York City banning face masks that civilians use to hide their identity while engaged in harassment or intimidation. Just 19% oppose a civilian face mask ban, according to the survey.

Moreover, 58% of respondents believe that the recent rise in Jew-hatred is linked to the normalization of anti-Zionism, while 25% don’t see such a link.

Some have said that the term “intifada” is innocuous when used in protests, but 60% of respondents said that it calls for violent destruction of Israel, and the same percentage said that Mamdani’s refusal to decry the phrase “globalize the intifada” has emboldened pro-Hamas protesters. Some 19% disagreed that Madmani’ was encouraging terror supporters, and 15% think that “intifada” refers to civil disobedience.

“The most telling thing is how few Jews voted for the Democratic candidate, which is unprecedented in the history of New York City elections,” Schulman told JNS.

“Yes, 26% voted for him, but on a whole host of other issues unrelated to Zionism or Israel,” he said. “We’re not seeing any indication that a large part of the Jewish community supports anti-Zionism.”

Pollsters asked respondents about their religious identification, frequency of engaging in Shabbat-related practices and adherence to kosher laws but the survey writers opted not to ask outright if people identify as “Zionist” or “anti-Zionist.”

“We didn’t want to get into those semantics,” Schulman told JNS.

Survey results suggest that some think that being critical of Israeli policies defines them as “anti-Zionist,” which it does not, according to Schulman.

Earlier recent studies have put that figure nationally at about 5% of American Jews, he told JNS.

Mark Treyger, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, which co-sponsored the study, told JNS that “at a moment of heightened division and rising antisemitism, our political leaders should foster thoughtful dialogue that recognizes the broad diversity of Jewish perspectives.”

It should do so “while reaffirming the dignity and belonging of Jewish New Yorkers in our civic life,” he said.

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