New York Gov. Kathy Hochul\u2019s lead over Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman in the race for governor remains virtually unchanged in the latest Siena University poll of likely voters released Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Hochul\u2019s nine-point lead over Blakeman (50-41%) puts her challenger within single digits. Hochul led 49-39% over Blakeman in August\u2019s poll<\/a>, and remains a noticeable drop from her 52-32% lead in June\u2019s Siena poll<\/a> of registered voters.<\/p>\n \u201cWith six weeks until election day, voters offer good news to both Hochul and Blakeman. She now has the support of 50% of voters and saw her favorability and job approval ratings edge into positive territory. He now trails by single digits \u2013 well, nine points \u2013 in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than two-to-one,\u201d Siena pollster Steven Greenberg said in a statement. \u201cAt this time four years ago, Hochul led Lee Zeldin 17 points, 54-37%, before going on to win by six points.\u201d<\/p>\n According to the latest poll, while only half of likely voters say they are supporting the incumbent, two-thirds of likely voters think she will win, including 37% of Republicans.<\/p>\n \u201cGiven a nine-point race, it might seem surprising that two-thirds of voters think Hochul will win,\u201d Greenberg said. \u201cOn the other hand, voters haven\u2019t elected a Republican governor in 24 years, and there is that two-to-one Democratic enrollment edge, so it may not be surprising that more than one-third of Republicans think Hochul will win, as do 61% of independents, although only 39% of independents currently plan to vote for her.\u201d<\/p>\n By a 51-30% margin, voters say they believe President Donald Trump\u2019s endorsement of Blakeman will be a negative for his campaign, while expressing, by a 50-30% margin, that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s endorsement of Hochul will be a positive for her campaign.<\/p>\n Blakeman, in a statement released after the poll was made public Wednesday, pointed to the nine-point gap and his campaign\u2019s focus on taxes and utility costs.<\/p>\n \u201cAll polls continue to show Kathy Hochul\u2019s downward spiral and me closing the gap as New Yorkers learn more about my plan to cut income taxes by historic margins and slash electric bills in half. And let\u2019s remember: at this point in the 2022 race, a Siena poll had Lee Zeldin trailing Kathy Hochul by 17 points. Today, our race is in single digits, with one-third of New Yorkers still needing to learn more about me,\u201d Blakeman said.<\/p>\n Likely voters were also asked who they felt would do a better job in making prices more affordable for the average New Yorker, keeping New Yorkers safe and addressing undocumented immigrants living in the state.<\/p>\n \u201cVoters still give Hochul small leads \u2013 between four and nine points \u2013 on making prices more affordable, keeping New Yorkers safe, and addressing undocumented immigrants living in the state. In August, Hochul led Blakeman by between one and seven points on those three issues,\u201d Greenberg said. \u201cVoters say the five-year incumbent governor has the \u2018right stuff to be governor\u2019 by only 47-42%. Voters are evenly split, 40-40%, on the five-year Nassau County executive. Pluralities say both Hochul, 46-39%, and Blakeman, 41-35%, are not \u2018in touch with average New Yorkers.\u2019 Voters say Hochul \u2018gets things done,\u2019 47-39%, but are divided on Blakeman, 35-34%.”<\/p>\n Outside of the governor\u2019s race, incumbent Attorney General Letitia James\u2019s lead over challenger Saritha Komatireddy is down slightly from August\u2019s 54-36% margin to 52-39% in the race for the state’s top prosecutor.<\/p>\n \u201cUnless Komatireddy can find a way to get more known to likely voters in the next few weeks, it appears that James is in a strong position heading into the home stretch of the campaign,\u201d Greenberg said.<\/p>\n In the comptroller\u2019s race, incumbent Tom DiNapoli\u2019s lead over challenger Joseph Hernandez of 56-33% changed only slightly from August\u2019s 55-32% margin.<\/p>\n Likely voters were also asked about their opinions on Trump\u2019s executive order renaming Lake Ontario as \u201cLake America.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOverall, nearly three-quarters of voters, 74%, oppose Trump\u2019s renaming of Lake Ontario as Lake America. While 93% of Democrats and 76% of independents oppose the renaming of Lake Ontario, a plurality of Republicans supports the Lake America renaming, 48-41%,\u201d Greenberg said. \u201cIt is strongly opposed upstate, 75-20%, and downstate, 76-18% in New York City and 70-20% in the downstate suburbs.\u201d<\/p>\n Respondents also voiced their opposition to any new large data centers being built in their area of the state.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen asked in August whether they thought Hochul\u2019s one-year moratorium on new large data centers was the right or wrong policy for the state, by a two-to-one margin, 52-25%, voters said the moratorium was the right decision,\u201d Greenberg said. \u201cNow, an even larger majority, 63-25%, say they don\u2019t want a new large data center built in their area of the state next year, after the moratorium expires. Three-quarters of Democrats and nearly two-thirds of independents are opposed, while Republicans are closely divided, narrowly supporting data centers in their area, 43-41%. At least 59% of voters from every region of the state oppose new data centers near them.\u201d<\/p>\n Democrats\u2019 lead on the generic congressional ballot fell from 54-38% in August to 51-40% in the latest poll.<\/p>\n A greater percentage of likely voters expressed their belief that the state is headed in the wrong direction, 49-38%, up from 47-43% in August, and, by a margin of 66-28%, they say the U.S. is headed in the wrong direction, up from 62-31% in August.<\/p>\n The poll was conducted Sept. 11-17 among 1,144 likely New York voters. It has an overall margin of error of +\/- 4.2 percentage points for the sample that answered the entire survey and an overall margin of error of +\/- 3.9 percentage points for the sample that answered the core questions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York Gov. Kathy Hochul\u2019s lead over Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman in the race for governor remains…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":354562,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[10511,38490,9,24,11,10,49,51,50,12,112,87,200],"class_list":["post-354561","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","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354561","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=354561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}