Italy’s Corriere della Sera called the result a “beating” for Trump, noting he deflected responsibility by arguing his name was not on the ballot.
The paper said the president ignored middle-class anxiety over soaring living costs, a key campaign theme.
Columnist Federico Rampini wrote that Mamdani’s win marked “a happy day not only for New York, but for American democracy,” adding that claims of creeping authoritarianism had been disproved and that Democrats prevailed widely.
La Repubblica attributed Mamdani’s success to youthful turnout, saying voters were persuaded by concrete proposals rather than ideology. Its front page cast him as a “mayor of another America,” arguing the victory “lit up the city again.”
In an editorial, Il Giornale portrayed Mamdani as cosmopolitan—born into an Indian aristocratic family, son of a Columbia University professor and filmmaker Mira Nair—and rejected labeling him a “communist,” saying he “is not thinking of revolution.”
The paper contrasted his message—“the state will take care of it”—with Trump’s promise of personal intervention, calling Mamdani “anti-matter to Trump.”
Polish commentator Witold Jurasz of Onet said the outcome is a painful lesson for Polish elites. He argued the results—Mamdani’s win in New York and Democratic victories in Virginia and New Jersey—are a poor omen for Trump ahead of the 2026 congressional elections.
Jurasz said Democrats appear to have remembered their roots as a party for the middle class and the less well-off, while Mamdani ran effectively against his own party’s establishment.
He dismissed claims in Poland that Mamdani’s platform is “communist,” calling it standard social-democratic fare from two decades ago.
The commentator blamed “liberal elites” for fueling Trumpism by neglecting ordinary voters, saying politics is as much about perception as facts.
He warned that Europe mirrors the U.S. trajectory: “turbo-capitalism,” the pauperization of broad social groups and their abandonment by traditional parties—developments that have fed the far right.
In Poland, he added, young people face limited opportunities and elite arrogance, problems that have not benefited social democracy but rather the radical right.
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Source: PAP, Onet