The city that never sleeps is lying wide awake in fear.

According to a startling new poll, many residents of the Big Apple believe their home is about to spiral into a dystopian nightmare of crime and violence, boarded-up storefronts and antisemitic hate if Zohran Mamdani becomes their mayor.

Mamdani, the 34-year-old self-described democratic socialist, is set to storm to victory in the election on November 4, the poll by J.L. Partners for the Daily Mail revealed.

He has a 15-point lead over his nearest rival, former New York state governor Andrew Cuomo.

The poll showed that many New Yorkers who do not support Mamdani are convinced he is going to 'destroy' America's biggest metropolis and crater its economy, sending shockwaves across the rest of the country.

They think it could mark a return to the urban decay of the 1980s when New York was blighted by poverty, rampant crime, crumbling infrastructure and abandoned buildings.

Even among Mamdani's own supporters more think he will make antisemitism in New York worse, rather than better.

Asked for one word to describe what the Big Apple would be like after four years of his left-wing policies, the most common response from non-Mamdani voters was 'disaster.'

They also said a Mamdani-run New York would be 'chaos,' 'hell,' 'broken,' and a 's***hole.'

Among voters who have made up their minds, Mamdani was on 46 percent support, according to the poll.

Cuomo, running as an independent, was on 31 percent, Republican Curtis Sliwa on 22 percent, and the rest was shared among minor candidates.

Among voters aged under 30, Mamdani has a massive 35-point lead over Cuomo.

Among Democrats, Mamdani has 54 percent support and Cuomo, who previously governed the state of New York as a Democrat, has 26 percent.

The poll found New Yorkers expect a wide array of the city's problems to get worse under a 'Mayor Mamdani,' including crime, antisemitism and the economy.

It found 47 percent believe levels of crime and violence will get worse, with only 32 percent saying the city would be safer under Mamdani. 

That follows a series of high-profile recent crimes on the subway.

In December, Debrina Kawam, 57, a homeless woman, was set on fire and burned to death. Shocking footage showed her being engulfed in flames in horror scenes on a train near Coney Island.

Last year, there were 10 murders in the subway system and felony assaults were up 55 percent since 2019. People were pushed on to the tracks at least 25 times in 2024.

On the issue of crime there was a stark split among New Yorkers based on age.

For voters under 30-years-old, 49 percent said they believed safety would improve under Mamdani, with 32 percent saying it would not.

But among over-65s only 26 percent thought the city would be safer under Mamdani and 50 percent said it would not.

Meanwhile, the poll found 43 percent of New Yorkers expect the number of businesses in the city to decrease under Mamdani, with stores going under and potential entrepreneurs forced to head elsewhere.

Only 23 percent thought the number of businesses would rise under the democratic socialist.

The poll showed 39 percent expected the risk of terrorism to increase under Mamdani, with only 18 percent thinking it will lessen.  

And 45 percent thought the problem of antisemitic views in the city would get worse, with only 21 percent thinking it would improve.

Even Democrats thought Mamdani would have a negative impact on antisemitism, with 29 percent saying he would make it better and 32 percent worse.

It comes amid an alarming surge in antisemitic incidents nationwide.

According to the Anti-Defamation League's annual audit, there were 9,354 incidents of antisemitic assault, harassment and vandalism across the U.S. in 2024.

That was a 900 percent increase over the past 10 years and the highest level recorded since the organization began tracking data in 1979.

Earlier this month, Mamdani faced a backlash after posting a picture of himself on social media with Imam Siraj Wahhaj, a Brooklyn-based Muslim cleric.

Wahhaj was named by federal prosecutors as an unindicted potential co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, a precursor to the 9/11 attacks. He was never charged with any crimes and denied involvement in the attack.

The poll revealed only one issue where New Yorkers thought Mamdani would improve the current situation.

It showed that 39 percent think housing would become more affordable under Mamdani, with 32 percent believing it would be less so.

Democrats backed him to reduce housing costs by 52 percent to 19 percent.

The poll also revealed a stark split among Democrat voters in New York, with many opposed to Mamdani.

It showed 33 percent of Democrats believe crime will rise, 29 percent think there will be less businesses, and 25 percent said the risk of terrorism will increase.

The poll was conducted between October 23 and 26 among 500 registered voters and had a margin of error of 4.4 percent.

Sliwa has resisted pressure to drop out to help Cuomo, suggesting if anyone was to stand down it should be Cuomo instead.

Cuomo is deeply unpopular with Republicans so Sliwa withdrawing may not greatly assist him.

On Monday, Sliwa said: 'I don’t know how many times I have to say it, I’m the only Republican candidate, I’m the law and order candidate, why would I want to drop out?'

Pollster James Johnson of J.L. Partners said: 'Mamdani is on course for a win - aided and abetted by his chief rivals.

'Mamdani is set to win the mayoralty on less than 50 percent of the vote largely due to a split opposition. Andrew Cuomo is an unpopular candidate that only one in three Republicans are getting behind.

'And Curtis Sliwa is a Republican in a city that is 70 percent Democrat. The result is that the two men are holding the gates of City Hall wide open for Zohran Mamdani.'

Mamdani, who is running to be New York's first Muslim mayor, was born in Uganda and moved to New York aged seven. His father is an academic and his mother a filmmaker. As a child he went to a private school in Manhattan where fees are now $66,000 a year.

Despite his ultra-privileged upbringing Mamdani is successfully appealing to working-class voters and young adults who find New York increasingly unaffordable to live in, with promises that he will bring their costs down.

His platform of policies includes a freeze on rent hikes, free bus services, fully-funded day care for under-5s, city-owned grocery stores, and turbocharging the minimum wage ultimately to $30 an hour.

He wants to fund those policies, which will cost billions of dollars, by raising taxes on the rich and companies.

There would be a 2 percent increase on New Yorkers earning over $1 million a year, and the top corporate tax rate would rise from 7.25 percent to 11.5 percent.

Critics say that will lead to a surge of firms and high-earning individuals leaving New York, which will in turn decimate the city's tax revenue and Mamdani unable to pay for his policies.

John Kane, a professor of political science at New York University, said Mamdani's virulent opposition to President Donald Trump has also had a strong symbolic appeal for a Democratic base in New York which 'feels almost entirely powerless in the present moment.' 

Daniel Schlozman, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University, said: 'Mamdani is evidence that the American left still has some juice in it in 2025.'

But he said America's biggest city does not reflect the United States overall and Mamdani being elected would be a 'very different matter' from Democrats succeeding nationally in midterm elections in 2026, or winning the presidency in 2028.

The poll was conducted amid a recent backlash against Mamdani over comments he made about 9/11.

In an emotional speech outside a mosque last week Mamdani, who would be the first Muslim mayor of New York, emotionally described how his 'aunt' had stopped rising the subway in the wake of the terrorist atrocity because she did not feel safe wearing a hijab.

Vice President J.D. Vance responded on X: 'According to Zohran the real victim of 9/11 was his auntie who got some (allegedly) bad looks.'

It then transpired that Mamdani had not been talking about an aunt, but his father's cousin.

Several days later, after the media tracked down his only living aunt, he clarified: 'I was speaking about Zehra fuhi, my father’s cousin, who passed away a few years ago.'

Fuhi stands for paternal aunt in Urdu and Hindi.

Relatives of 9/11 victims slammed him over the incident.

Terry Strada, who lost her husband Tom, 41, when the World Trade Center collapsed, told the Daily Mail: 'I find what he (Mamdani) had to say completely insulting to all of the people that suffered a horrible loss that day.

'To compare an aunt being uncomfortable on the subway to all of these families that were murdered was just very insensitive.'

President Donald Trump has branded Mamdani a 'communist' and threatened to cut off federal funding to the city if he is elected.

But the president is reportedly resigned to Mamdani winning, with it seemingly tooo late for Cuomo or Sliwa to catch up.