One of the most striking trends in New York politics over the past five years has been the transformation of Western Queens into one of the city’s socialist strongholds. Every year, campaign cartographers give us maps that show the borough’s western edge — from Astoria Heights to Hunters Point — awash in whichever color they chose to represent the most left-wing candidate on the ballot. Every year, four clusters of election districts are conspicuous in their defiance of the new local consensus. They remain islands of support for establishment politics amidst a rising tide of socialism, one pouring deeper inland each election cycle as if from the East River itself.

These districts are home to the only NYCHA developments in Western Queens: Astoria Houses, Ravenswood, Queensbridge, and Woodside Houses. They’re holdouts against the trends sweeping across their half of the borough because geography is only a rough proxy for how such changes actually move through society: via relationships between people in real community with one another. Public housing residents here, like in the rest of the city and cities across the country, are cut off in so many ways from the communities that surround them. Disproportionately poor and black, they approach politics with a much different history, and a different understanding of how best to navigate the challenges posed by the capitalist order. For years, the Left has failed to pose a compelling alternative.

Last week’s election results show that — in Astoria at least — we may be finally making some progress.