Local media have cast the Queens DA’s race as a battle for the ideological soul of the Democratic Party. The media hold up the two candidates — 31-year-old ultra-progressive Tiffany Cabán versus pragmatic life-long politico Melinda Katz — as emblems of the two camps vying for the future of the Queens Democrats.

But the data don’t support this narrative.

The real driver of the political shift, which has caught some by surprise, is rapid gentrification in western Queens. In other words, the race isn’t a story of the downtrodden and vulnerable suddenly rising up to throw off the corporate world for economic populism. It is more a story of mostly upscale, young members of that corporate world settling in Long Island City’s new luxury sky-rises, bringing their brand of elite liberalism to the borough.

The numbers are instructive. Katz won 12 of the 18 Assembly districts in Queens. Of the six Cabán won, five are occupied by white lawmakers, the exception being Catalina Cruz in the 39th Assembly District.

But Cabán ran up the score in western Queens, beating Katz in the 36th Assembly District (Astoria) 6,174 to 1,011 and besting the borough president in the 37th AD (Long Island City) 4,658 to 1,364. Roughly a third of her votes came from those two areas, where turnout vastly outpaced the rest of the borough, and where population is growing at a fast clip.

Compare those vote totals to the 2018 June Democratic congressional primaries. While Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez got all the headlines by beating Joe Crowley, the more telling number from that day is what happened in the 12th Congressional District represented by Rep. Carolyn Maloney.

Maloney faced an insurgent challenge from Suraj Patel, yet won the Queens section of her district (mostly the 37th AD, with parts in the 36th AD) 3,392 to 3,107.

The vote totals were significantly smaller in western Queens one year earlier, even though overall voter turnout in the primary was higher, slightly, in the 2018 primary. So what changed in one year?

The most likely answer is new voters arrived and the Cabán campaign was more effective in identifying them and getting them out to vote. Enrollment stats back this up, with the 36th AD adding 3,115 Democrats in 10 months, and the 37th AD adding 3,551 Democrats to the rolls in that same time. While Democratic enrollment has shot up all over Queens, these two Assembly districts saw roughly double the increase of the other ADs in the borough.

There is great irony in all this. The influx of progressive meritocrats living in close proximity with each other is thanks in part to the real estate industry, which progressives like AOC and Cabán decry.

Let’s back up to 2015. The Legislature and Gov. Andrew Cuomo couldn’t extend the 1970s-era tax abatement program, known as 421-a, that allows new developments a window of 10 to 25 years during which they don’t have to pay property taxes.

With 421-a set to expire, developers rushed through projects to take advantage of the break, creating a housing boom in LIC. Tenants are now filling up the developments that came about as a result.

According to the Department of City Planning, LIC added 2,800 units, with an estimated 5,900 units that were in the pipeline to open in coming years. These properties have been selling quickly because of the city’s housing shortage and the fact that owners won’t have to pay taxes on their new pads until the 2040s.

In the final days of the DA race, the Katz campaign received tens of thousands of dollars from real estate interests. The Cabán camp railed against the donations and used it as a rallying cry to motivate supporters. But if it weren’t for those special interests investing millions of dollars in Queens, thanks to a generous state tax break, this burgeoning liberal base of support wouldn’t exist.

This election is less a movement and more an unintended consequence of LIC’s growth. It isn’t a model that can be recreated by liberals, unless they look the other way and allow the developers to rapidly redesign another pocket of the city.

While there are clearly signs the Democratic Party is moving rapidly to the left both nationally and here in New York, activists shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking Queens is an example of this accelerated liberalism. Winning over voters in other areas of the borough is going to be a slower crawl — and decisions like running high-paying jobs from Amazon out of town will likely make that crawl an uphill battle in years to come.

Michael Johnson is a freelance journalist in Flushing.