New Poll Has Cuomo Taking Big Lead over Nixon in Gubernatorial Race
A new poll indicates that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has little to worry about in regards to his most vocal challenger, Cynthia Nixon. The new Siena College poll of likely Democratic primary voters has the governor ahead of Nixon by 31 percentage points with the clock ticking as the primary polls open and close only 50 days from now.
There aren’t too many bright spots for Nixon, who trails Cuomo pretty much across the board of demographics. In particular, Cuomo’s African-American community support remains notably strong, with 75 percent of black voters telling the pollster they support the current governor while only 19 percent showed support for Nixon, despite both candidates going to great lengths to win over the black voting bloc.
Nixon tried to do something to shake things up, especially now that the poll indicates that her efforts with the black community aren’t productive, by endorsing Jumaane Williams to be her running mate last Sunday. Williams is running to be lieutenant governor, a sort-of parallel to the vice president but on the state level, but the key reason for Nixon specifically supporting him is that Williams is an African-American city councilman. Nixon and the city councilman representing Brooklyn campaigned together at the beginning of the week, which wasn’t the first occasion the two appeared together to join campaign forces.
Current Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul leads Williams 30 percent to 21 percent in what’s a much closer race than the gubernatorial one. About half of the voters were undecided about the lieutenant governor. Cuomo leads Nixon 60 percent to 29 percent, which marks the third time in a row that a poll had the incumbent governor ahead of his challenger by over 30 percentage points.
Nixon’s campaign continued downplaying the negative polls, hoping that a surge of newly motivated voters will carry Nixon to victory, similar to how Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez shocked the political world when she defeated longtime and powerful Rep. Joseph Crowley in June.
The poll found that liberal Democrats supported Cuomo 57 percent to 35 percent despite Nixon running a more politically liberal campaign. Nixon’s only sliver of a silver lining is that she leads Cuomo by 5 points on the question of who would better advance “progressive policies.”
About a third of upstate voters showed support for Nixon despite the fact that she spends most of her time campaigning in the city. The reason why may be that for voters, it may be more about Cuomo than Nixon, with 60 percent of voters who support Nixon citing disenchantment with Cuomo as the reason for the support. Only 11 percent of people who plan to vote for Cuomo said they would do so because they don’t like Nixon.
Cuomo’s strongest numbers come from the suburbs of New York, where about three quarters of Democrats support him.