Kathy Hochul, Letitia James Gain Voter Support for 2022 N.Y. Governor Race
Kathy Hochul, Letitia James Gain Voter Support for 2022 N.Y. Governor Race
(Bloomberg) -- Roughly three months after her surprise rise to the state’s highest office, New York Governor Kathy Hochul leads Democrats vying in the 2022 governor race, according to a new Siena College poll out Tuesday.
The poll found 36% of New York’s registered Democrats say they’d vote for Hochul if the primary were held today, up from 31% in mid-October, while 18% would vote for New York state Attorney General Letitia James, who formally declared plans to seek the office in October.
Hochul was virtually unknown when she took over in late August. The former lieutenant governor assumed the role after Governor Andrew Cuomo resigned over sexual harassment allegations.
In a Siena poll from early September, 41% of registered voters said they either hadn’t heard of Hochul or knew too little about her to form an opinion. Now, that number has shrunk to 30%.
The field of Democrats vying to replace Hochul is growing. In the last month, New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and Tom Suozzi, the Long Island Congressman known for his work on the SALT tax deduction cap, both said they would run.
The Siena poll showed 10% of Democrats back Williams, and 6% support Suozzi. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who’ll be out of elected office for the first time in more than a decade when his term ends this month, is also considering a run for governor, but hasn’t made a formal announcement.
Only 6% of Democrats said they would vote for de Blasio. “De Blasio is the most known – and most disfavored – candidate among all voters and with just Democrats,” said Siena College pollster Steven Greenberg.
The poll also showed New Yorkers are increasingly dissatisfied with President Joe Biden’s job performance. Just 39% of New Yorkers rated Biden’s performance positively, down from 55% in February 2021, and 38% said he was doing a “poor” job in office.
“Currently, about half of voters say that inflation is having a very serious negative effect on the nation’s economy, and more than one-quarter say it is having a serious negative impact on their personal finances,” Greenberg said.
The poll, which was conducted between Nov. 29 and Dec. 3, surveyed 785 registered voters in New York state and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
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