{"id":378341,"date":"2026-10-20T22:36:16","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T22:36:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/378341\/"},"modified":"2026-10-20T22:36:16","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T22:36:16","slug":"hochul-leads-blakeman-by-only-4-points-in-ny-governors-race-gop-internal-poll-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/378341\/","title":{"rendered":"Hochul leads Blakeman by only 4 points in NY governor’s race, GOP internal poll claims"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gov. Kathy Hochul\u2019s lead over Republican rival Bruce Blakeman<\/a> in New York\u2019s gubernatorial race has narrowed to just about four points, an internal GOP poll obtained by The Post claims.<\/p>\n

Blakeman trailed the Democratic incumbent by just 4.4 points \u2014 50.3% to 45.9% \u2014 according to the survey conducted by On Message Inc. for Republican Saritha Komatireddy\u2019s campaign for attorney general.<\/a><\/p>\n

The same poll showed Democratic Attorney General Letitia James leading Komatireddy by 6 points, 50.7% to 44.7%.<\/p>\n

Gov. Kathy Hochul holds a press conference announcing that a joint investigative partnership by members of the New York State Police and the New York State Department of Financial Services resulted in the arrests of 16 individuals as part of ongoing and joint auto insurance fraud investigations on Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026. Brian Zak\/NY Post<\/p>\n

Democratic incumbent Gov. Kathy Hochul and Republican challenger Bruce Blakeman face off in a debate at the Spectrum News NY1 studios in Manhattan on Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2026. Pool photo by Anna Connors for The New York Times<\/p>\n

The Komatireddy campaign poll of 1,000 likely New York voters also asked about the governor\u2019s race<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It showed Blakeman, the Nassau County executive, with a dominant lead in the Buffalo region \u2014 Hochul\u2019s home turf \u2014\u00a0 56% to 42%.<\/p>\n

While the City of Buffalo leans Democrat, the surrounding counties are among the most conservative and Republican-leaning in the state.<\/p>\n

Voters in the Albany region also favored Blakeman over Hochul\u00a0 52% to 44%, and other rural parts of the state backed the Republican 62% to 33%, according to the survey.<\/p>\n

Hochul\u2019s biggest lead was in the New York City media market, where she led Blakeman 54.2% to 41.9%.<\/p>\n

New York gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman is joined by former New York Governor George Pataki in upper Manhattan at 1455 St. Nicholas Ave. in New York to discuss high energy costs on Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2026. Matthew McDermott for NY Post<\/p>\n

The market includes Long Island and the northern Hudson Valley suburbs, such as\u00a0 Westchester and Rockland counties, as well as the Big Apple\u2019s five boroughs.<\/p>\n

Hochul, who is seeking a second four-year term on November 3, held slight leads in the Rochester and Syracuse regions, 50% to 46% and 49.1% to\u00a0 47.1%, respectively.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis race for governor is very competitive,\u201d said campaign strategist O\u2019Brien \u201cO.B.\u201d Murray, who worked on Republican George Pataki\u2019s successful campaign for governor in 1994.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this race anything can happen. Four years ago people were tiring of Kathy Hochul. Nobody expected that race to be that close,\u201d said Murray, referring to Hochul\u2019s narrow six point victory in 2022<\/a> over Republican Lee Zeldin.<\/p>\n

The survey aligns with Blakeman\u2019s own campaign polling, which last month showed him trailing Hochul by 4 points. In a survey released last week, new pollster Pollfinity also had Hochul ahead<\/a> by a slim 4 points.<\/p>\n

But the Real Clear Politics average of four recent surveys done by veteran independent pollsters show<\/a> Hochul ahead of Blakeman by a more comfortable average of 12.8 points \u2014 ranging from 9 points in a Siena University to 19 points in a Quinnipiac U poll taken over the last month, the latter predicting a bigger New York City voter turnout.<\/p>\n

The Komatireddy campaign poll of 1,000 likely voters by the firm OnMessage Inc.\u00a0 was conducted from October 12\u201314. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points.<\/p>\n

OnMessage Inc. was ranked as one of the most accurate pollsters during the 2024 election cycle.<\/p>\n

The Hochul campaign insisted that the incumbent governor has the \u201clead\u201d and \u201cmomentum\u201d when asked about the tight poll.<\/p>\n

\u201cGovernor Hochul continues to build her lead and momentum \u2013 New Yorkers want nothing to do with the same Bruce Blakeman who promised to \u2018cut Medicaid in half,\u2019 never disagree with Donald Trump, and said ICE was doing a \u2018very, very good job\u2019 as they abused their power in New York and across the country,\u201d\u00a0 said\u00a0Hochul campaign spokesperson Ryan Radulovacki.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gov. Kathy Hochul\u2019s lead over Republican rival Bruce Blakeman in New York\u2019s gubernatorial race has narrowed to just…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378342,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1626,426,57,9,24,55,54,56,13895,87,7782,58],"class_list":["post-378341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-bruce-blakeman","tag-kathy-hochul","tag-metro","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-ny-governor-election-2026","tag-politics","tag-polls","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378341","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=378341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378341\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}