Can Republican Candidates Recreate Mamdani’s Success?

One month before the 2025 New York City mayoral Democratic primary, betting markets gave Zohran Mamdani only a 7.2% chance to win. Now, two conservative underdog candidates, James Fishback in Florida’s governor’s race and Spencer Pratt in the Los Angeles mayor’s race, are trying to follow his path with insurgent, social media-heavy campaigns.

Los Angeles Mayoral Race

Spencer Pratt, who rose to fame in the 2000s on MTV’s “The Hills,” went viral on X after posting a short campaign video criticizing Mayor Karen Bass and City Councilmember Nithya Raman, his two opponents, for failing to address homelessness in Los Angeles and help rebuild after the Palisades fires, which burned his home. After the April 29 video received 14 million views on his post alone, along with tens to hundreds of millions of views from people using the video, his odds of winning the mayoral race spiked from 17% to 33%, passing Nithya Raman. The current odds in betting markets sit at Bass with a 68% chance, followed by Pratt at 27% and Raman at 6.1%.

The first election for the mayoral race is on June 2, though if no candidate receives a majority, the runoff election will take place on Nov. 3.

The two latest polls of the race have the election within just a few points. A May 9-10 poll from Emerson College found that Karen Bass led with 30%, followed by Pratt at 22% and Raman at 19%. A Cygnal (R) poll found that Pratt trailed Bass by only 3 points, 22% to 25%, followed by Raman at 18%. The Cygnal poll did find, though, that in a head-to-head matchup between Bass and Pratt, Bass led by 14 points, 47%-33%, meaning that if Pratt is able to make it to the runoff, he still has a significant margin to make up before the November election.

Florida Gubernatorial Republican Primary

In Florida’s Republican gubernatorial primary, James Fishback faces an even tougher contest against Trump-endorsed Republican Rep. Byron Donalds.

Poll results for the race vary widely depending on who is conducting them. In a Change Research (D) poll and a Fabrizio, Lee & Associates (R) poll, Fishback trails Donalds by 39 and 45 points, respectively. However, in a Public Sentiment Institute poll, he is much closer, at 35% to Donalds’ 46%. The Public Sentiment Institute poll has drawn some skepticism, however, as the pollster has not been around for very long, causing skepticism about the poll. Byron Donalds’ campaign director referred to the TPSI poll as an “astroturfed, one-off” poll.

Betting markets see Fishback’s likelihood of winning the Aug. 18 primary as very slim. In the latest betting market numbers, Donalds has an 88% chance to win, while Fishback has only 9%. This marks a steep decline from his high point after entering the race in late November 2025, when his odds reached 25% on Dec. 3, a level he has not matched since.

Both races will be used as test cases for campaigns heading into 2028 and beyond. If either candidate wins, or even comes within a few points of victory, it suggests that Mamdani’s success was not merely a fluke driven by historically low confidence in the Democratic Party’s old guard, but a repeatable strategy for the online age.