Suffolk University’s Political Research Center reported results from a recent New York City resident survey that showed a 20-point lead between Democratic Party nominee Zohran Mamdani and his closest competitor.
The Political Research Center launched its Cityview project in 2021, focusing on surveying the public of major cities like Boston and New York in partnership with USA TODAY and major regional media outlets like The Boston Globe.
Their most recent poll took place Sept. 16-18, and was conducted over the phone interviews with 500 adults from the five counties of NYC who indicated they were very likely or somewhat likely to vote in the Nov. 4 general election.
The results landed Mamdani with 45% of votes, Independent Andrew Cuomo with 25%, Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa with 9% and current Mayor Eric Adams with 8%.
Mayor Adams announced the end of his reelection campaign Sept. 28.
The poll, nearly split between renters and owners, showed that 51% of people would describe New York City as unaffordable, with 58% agreeing that the economy has become worse under President Trump’s administration while 23% argued former President Joe Biden had a worse economic impact.
“This poll shows that the issues New Yorkers really care about in this election are affordability, crime and the economy,” said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center in the report.
Respondents showed that 21% of people believed the mayoral race’s top issue is affordability, crime slightly behind with 20%, jobs and economy sitting at 14%, housing with 9%, local response to Trump initiatives made up 8%, racism/justice/equality were just behind at 7%, leaving 6% of residents stating schools/education and all other issues falling below 4%.
Sixty-eight percent of voters stated unhappiness with immigration enforcement in the city, stating ICE has gone too far, while 9% said they haven’t gone far enough.
Conservative Party nominee Irene Estrada, independent Joseph Hernandez and independent Jim Walden made up the rest of the ballot with a combined 1% of votes, with 9% undecided and 3% of those polled refusing a response.
The Political Research Center also reported the margin of sampling error for results based on the total sample is +/- 4.4 percentage points.
