With Election Day less than three months away, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul\u2019s lead over Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman in the race for governor has narrowed, according to a Siena University poll of likely voters released Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Hochul\u2019s 10-point lead over Blakeman in Wednesday\u2019s poll, 49-39%, is a 10-point fall from June\u2019s Siena poll<\/a> of registered voters, which at the time saw her lead jump up from 16 points in April.<\/a><\/p>\n This marks Siena\u2019s first poll of likely voters this election cycle.<\/p>\n Some good news for Hochul, according to the poll, is that likely voters say the governor will do a better job than Blakeman increasing the supply of affordable housing, 51-35%, developing New York\u2019s energy future, 47-42%, and will do a better job making prices more affordable for average New Yorkers, 48-41%.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile Hochul has a 10-point lead, likely voters think she\u2019ll do a better job than Blakeman on increasing affordable housing by 16 points,\u201d Siena pollster Steven Greenberg said in a statement.<\/p>\n Hochul also leads Blakeman in favorability rating, 46-49% to 33-26%, with coming in with a 48-49% job approval rating, according to the poll. By comparison, pollsters say Hochul had a 46-41% favorability rating among likely voters in August 2022 polling. \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cNot surprisingly, both candidates are holding on to their partisan bases, as Hochul leads among Democrats 80-8% and Blakeman leads among Republicans 84-9%. Likely independent voters favor Blakeman by a narrow five-point margin, 45-40%,\u201d Greenberg said. \u201cHochul holds a commanding 64-19% lead in New York City, but trails Blakeman in the downstate suburbs by eight points, 49-41%. They are running virtually even in upstate, as well as among men and with white voters; Hochul has large leads with women, Latinos and Black voters.\u201d<\/p>\n Voters were also asked whether four character traits \u2014 “tough,” “in touch with average NYers,” “honest,” and “gets things done” \u2014 do or do not describe Blakeman and Hochul. According to the poll, \u201clikely voters say Blakeman is \u2018tough\u2019 by 25 points and Hochul by two points. They say Blakeman is \u2018honest\u2019 by five points and Hochul is not by two points, and Blakeman \u2018gets things done\u2019 by eight points and Hochul by five points. On being \u2018in touch with average New Yorkers,\u2019 Blakeman is underwater by four points and Hochul is underwater by 12 points.\u201d<\/p>\n Greenberg says voters think Hochul is \u201cbetter than Blakeman on four other issues \u2013 affordability, energy, safety, and immigrants \u2013 by between only one and seven points. Holding to form, Democrats overwhelmingly think Hochul will be better on all issues than Blakeman, and Republicans overwhelmingly think Blakeman will be better. Independents favor Hochul by nine points on housing, but favor Blakeman by between eight and 15 points on the other four issues.\u201d<\/p>\n Likely voters were also asked about statewide races for attorney general and state comptroller.<\/p>\n According to the poll, incumbent AG Letitia James leads challenger Saritha Komatireddy 54-36%. James has a 52-38% favorability rating, compared to 17-12% for Komatireddy, who has served as a federal prosecutor and chief of staff at the Drug Enforcement Agency. Komatireddy still remains unknown to many, with more than two-thirds of likely voters saying they have either never heard of her, or don\u2019t know enough to have an opinion.<\/p>\n \u201cJames\u2019 52% favorable rating is the highest it\u2019s ever been,\u201d Greenberg said. \u201cKomatireddy has her work cut out for her in trying to become known to voters and then convincing them to support her.\u201d<\/p>\n In the comptroller\u2019s race, incumbent Tom DiNapoli leads challenger Joseph Hernandez, a Biotech entrepreneur, 55-32%.<\/p>\n In regards to other elections this fall, Democrats\u2019 lead on the generic congressional ballot stands at 54-38%, a lead that stood at 52-32% in the prior poll.<\/p>\n The poll was conducted Aug. 3-6 among 811 likely New York voters and has an overall margin of error of +\/- 4.6 percentage points.<\/p>\n In response to the latest poll, Blakeman says the results don’t reflect what his camp has been seeing.<\/p>\n “All of the polls we have seen in the last two months have us virtually tied with Kathy Hochul. This poll is always off and continues to be off. We know and she knows this race is neck and neck. Kathy Hochul is desperate for people to believe that she is way ahead when she knows that her high taxes, soaring electric bills, and increased crime have made her the worst governor in America,” he said in a statement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With Election Day less than three months away, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul\u2019s lead over Nassau County Executive…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":319384,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[10511,38490,9,24,11,10,49,51,50,12,112,87],"class_list":["post-319516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-adam-penale","tag-decision-2026","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-news","tag-ny-state-of-politics","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}