New Poll Shows Cuomo Surging But Still Trails Mamdani

Independent candidate Andrew Cuomo surged by 10 percentage points in the first major poll to be released since Eric Adams announced he was ending his run for re-election. But the former governor still trails Zohran Mamdani by double digits.

Cuomo jumped from 23 percent who favored him when it was a four-way race with Adams in the picture, to 33 percent in the latest Quinnipiac University New York City poll, released Oct. 9. Adams, in a bombshell disclosure on Sept. 28, said he was not seeking re-election, and most of the former Adams supporters appear to have migrated to Cuomo.

Zohran Mamdani, the Queens Assembly member, saw his poll number tick upward to 46 percent, up by 1 percent from the last Quinnipiac poll on the race before Adams dropped out.

Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate, was essentially flat, with the same 15 percent favoring him before and after the Adams announcement.

”Andrew Cuomo picked up the bulk of Adams’s supporters, cutting into Zohran Mamdani’s lead, but Mamdani’s front-runner status by double digits stays intact,” said Mary Snow, an assistant polling director at Quinnipiac.

While the general election is Nov. 4, early voting starts on Oct. 24. In the last Presidential election, over 1 million NYC residents voted early.

In the last mayoral election, in 2021, turnout was a lot lower, with the Board of Election estimating only about 24 percent of registered voters turned out. It remains to be seen if the wild twists and turns in the run-up to this year’s election will prompt more people to turn out or prompt more people to be turned off.

And the shadow of Trump, who is wildly unpopular in his former hometown, hangs over the election as well. Trump weighed in, saying he’d prefer to see a two-way race, which meant essentially snubbing the Republican Sliwa and supporting a Cuomo race against only Mamdani. Sliwa has no intention of dropping out.

Adams’s failure to level criticism at Trump while trying to help the feds in their immigration crackdown also alienated many in the overwhelmingly Democratic city. And of course the Trump Department of Justice dropped a five-count federal corruption charge against Adams.

How Sticky?

Now that it is a three-way race, the question that was asked by pollsters was the all-important one: How enthusiastic were the likely voters for their candidate. Mamdani seems to have the “stickiest” supporters, with a quarter of Cuomo’s likely voters saying they could switch.

Among likely voters backing Mamdani, 87 percent say it is either not not likely at all (69 percent) or not so likely (18 percent) that they will change their minds, while 12 percent say it is either somewhat likely (10 percent) or very likely (2 percent).

Among likely voters backing Sliwa, 81 percent say it is either not so likely (24 percent) or not likely at all (57 percent) that they will change their minds, while 17 percent say it is either somewhat likely (13 percent) or very likely (4 percent).

Among likely voters backing Cuomo, 73 percent say it is either not so likely (18 percent) or not likely at all (55 percent) that they will change their minds, while 25 percent say it is either somewhat likely (19 percent) or very likely (6 percent).

Rich Azzopardi, chief spokesman for Cuomo, said at this point in the primary, Mamdani was behind by 17 and came on at the end to beat Cuomo by 13 points. “We’re building momentum at the right time,” he said. And while nobody expects Republican candidate Sliwa to drop out and make it a two-man race, Cuomo’s team is trying to push the idea that a vote for Sliwa is a vote for Mamdani, whose far-left policies and standing as a Democratic Socialist worries some voters and so is the perception that he is anti-Jewish and anti-police.

Mamdani, for his part, has been steering clear of some of his more controversial statements from the past. But he did blast Cuomo for criticizing the indictment of State Attorney General Letitia James but not actually mentioning James or Trump by name “because his narrow path to City Hall is paved by the very billionaires who put Donald Trump back in the White House.”

In his statement on the indictments, Cuomo said, “In a democracy, the rule of law must be sacred—impartial, objective, and above politics. When the law is weaponized or manipulated to advance political agendas, it erodes public trust and weakens the very foundation of justice.”

“He cannot speak his name lest he has permission already to do so,” Mamdani said at a press conference downtown. “If you are unwilling to do so today—if you cannot say Donald Trump’s name today—how will you stand up to him tomorrow?”