PHOTO: Zohran Mamdani swearing in, 2026, NYC Mayor’s Office on Wikimedia Commons
For years, the surest way to kill a progressive campaign was to prop up a moderate opponent, or simply to label the candidate too progressive, too ambitious, too unrealistic, and therefore unelectable. From US Senator Bernie Sanders to UK Member of Parliament Jeremy Corbyn, that label did a lot of the work. It let party officials and donors sideline candidates, vetoing their candidacies before a single vote was cast, and it shaped which candidates got funding, endorsements, and party backing. Centrism was the default, and anything more ambitious was dismissed as unrealistic.
That doctrine survived as long as it did because deteriorating material conditions hadn’t yet made “risky” and “unrealistic” look like the only options left on the table. But recent wins show us that things are changing.
Housing costs in the US have hit an all-time high, outpacing wage growth in major cities. Healthcare costs remain crushing, with more than 100 million Americans carrying medical debt. Student loan debt is following Americans wherever they go, pushing some “debt dodgers” to flee to Europe entirely. Set against that backdrop, policies like rent freezes and universal healthcare stop sounding radical and start sounding like the only proportionate response to the scale of the problem.
Before the 2020s, electability meant centrism, safe politics, safe votes, safe results. That consensus is now being dismantled and rebuilt, starting with New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and, more recently, Abdul El-Sayed in the Senate race for Michigan.
Running on an explicitly progressive platform, Abdul El-Sayed won despite more than $83 million USD spent against him by outside groups, a sum that would have ended his campaign early had traditional political approaches not been losing their grip
Mamdani’s campaign may have been the headline case, built on affordability, grassroots organising, on-the-ground mobilisation, and a direct connection with the average voter. Still, others are quickly following the path he paved, and Abdul El-Sayed’s Senate primary win in Michigan arguably proves these wins aren’t one-offs. They suggest something more than isolated upsets. Left-wing candidates are taking bigger risks and becoming more unapologetic about their campaign policies and beliefs.
Are voters globally feeling the same pressures and responding in similar ways?
International Comparisons
The Teals in Australia
This set of independents, also referred to as the ‘Teals’, typically pair liberal values of fiscal conservatism with Greens ideals of strong environmental action.
Their first emergence came with Member of Parliament Zali Steggall, who took former Prime Minister Tony Abbott in the New South Wales seat of Warringah in 2019, winning over 60 per cent of the electorate’s vote in a seat once considered a safe Liberal stronghold.
Steggall served as an alternative for disenfranchised Liberal voters, demonstrating that voters could selectively prioritise the issues they cared about rather than accept an entire party platform. Her supporters were not necessarily abandoning their conservative values altogether, but rather the party traditionally associated with them.
At the time of the 2019 election, Steggall faced smear campaigns portraying her as aligned with Labor, with claims that “a vote for Zali Steggall is a vote for Bill Shorten,” Labor’s candidate for prime minister at the time. Even the attempts to discredit her relied on assigning her to an established political category and attempting to fit her into the conventional left-right divide.
The assumption was that if Steggall held conservative positions on some issues relevant to voters, she should naturally belong with the Liberals. Her candidacy instead challenged this logic, demonstrating that voters could support a candidate whose positions did not fit neatly within a single party or ideology.
The relevance of the Teals to Mamdani is not ideology, but it’s voters’ growing willingness to abandon the “safe, party-backed” option in favour of something more ambitious, regardless of where that option sits on the political spectrum.
Sadiq Khan in London
When Khan first ran for mayor, he faced attacks strikingly similar to those later aimed at Mamdani, framed as someone fundamentally incompatible with the city he sought to lead because of his supposedly overreaching politics. Social media users joined in on the hate campaign launched by the Conservative Party, using rhetoric like “Londonistan,” which painted the candidate as foreign to the city. That same rhetoric later resurfaced with Mamdani’s campaign, recycled as “Mamdanistan.”
But while both faced similar hurdles, what set Mamdani apart was his willingness to challenge his own party establishment. Khan, by contrast, has stayed notably more restrained towards Labour’s leadership than Mamdani has been towards his own. Recently, though, that’s begun to shift, with Khan taking bolder stances— including criticising Prime Minister Keir Starmer for taking “progressive voters for granted.” In many ways, Khan is an example of politicians and policies once considered ‘too radical’ becoming normalised and more palatable over time, with his popularity now setting him up to run for a fourth term.
The change in voter attitudes raises the question of whether it reflects a broader shift in political values or simply a growing willingness to look beyond the major parties.
For Australian voters at least, people are becoming less attached to political categories in the polling booth. Among voters who said Labor was closest to their views on the environment, 19.6 per cent nevertheless voted for another party or an independent. The implication is not necessarily that voters are becoming more progressive, but that party labels are becoming less reliable predictors of individual political preferences and voting behaviour. This, in turn, can create an advantage for parties and independents that prioritise progressive positions on major issues such as climate change and the cost of living.
Zack Polanski and the UK Greens
PHOTO: Carla Denyer and Zack Polanski, Bristol Green Party on Flickr
The Green Party has long existed on the margins of British politics, never seriously threatening the Labour-Conservative (and now Reform) duopoly. But their recent surge in the polls since Polanski took the lead— hitting its highest level in decades— could be a sign that people are looking for a more assertive, confident leftism. One that communicates ambitious policies with conviction rather than watering them down. Grace Smoker, vice president of media strategy at Stu Loeser & Co, said the shift isn’t about platform gimmicks like “doing a TikTok”; it’s about knowing how to communicate and listen.
Right-wing populism
This dynamic is not exclusive to the progressive left. The rise of right-wing populists such as Donald Trump and Reform UK’s Nigel Farage suggests that the rejection of conventional politics and the shift towards more radical alternatives can operate across the ideological spectrum. In periods of dissatisfaction with major parties, voters may become more receptive to politicians who project conviction, a willingness to take on the status quo and a readiness to take political risks, whether they are left-wing or right-wing. Positions that may previously have been considered too extreme can become more politically palatable when conventional politics appears increasingly incapable of addressing new or worsening problems.
Material conditions therefore work hand in hand with political perceptions, and as economic and social conditions deteriorate or become more salient/noticeable, the status quo can increasingly be seen as inadequate or unfit to address voters’ concerns.
As a result, voters become less confined to conventional political categories and instead gravitate towards politicians offering unconventional solutions. In this context, a willingness to challenge the political establishment can become an electoral asset.
Importantly, this mechanism is not limited to one end of the political spectrum.
If the dominant frustration is inequality or the cost of living, this may benefit a progressive or left-wing politician willing to propose policies that were previously considered radical, such as rent freezes, a policy Zohran Mamdani campaigned on and is now delivering on.
Likewise, if the dominant grievance is immigration and a perceived ‘loss of control’, the same dynamic can benefit a right-wing populist proposing stricter immigration controls and migration caps.
This dynamic has been seen with Pauline Hanson’s One Nation in Australia and Reform UK in Britain. As migration becomes an increasingly prominent grievance in Australia, One Nation is building political momentum by presenting itself as an alternative to what it portrays as excessively high migration, proposing dramatic cuts to migration as its solution.
PHOTO: Pauline Hanson, Jfish92 on Wikimedia Commons
Despite considerable confusion over the specifics of One Nation’s migration policy, including uncertainty surrounding Hanson’s own figures and precisely what her proposed migration target would be, the message voters are receiving remains clear cut: migration is too high, and One Nation will take action to reduce it.
One Nation’s soaring poll numbers and favourability, even winning the Perth state electorate seat of Secret Harbour only a few days ago in a by-election against Labor, can only suggest that in periods of economic anxiety and uncertainty, voters will prioritise a politician’s willingness to take risks in their policies rather than the coherence of the proposed solution.
Ultimately, the question is less about whether voters are moving left or right, and more about which politicians best resonate with the issues that concern them most. Their appeal lies less in ideological standing and more in the perceived solutions they offer, and in their willingness to challenge an establishment increasingly seen as incapable of addressing voters’ concerns.
Research shows that politicians who use ‘anti-establishment rhetoric’ are rated more positively and are more likely to attract votes than those using pro-establishment rhetoric, regardless of the feasibility of their policies. This suggests politics could become less about realistic, workable solutions and more about who is willing to promise the most, without knowing whether or not they can deliver.
