The Closing Sprint: Blakeman Toured Eight Cities on the Last Day, Hochul Closed in New York City
Bruce Blakeman started Monday over breakfast in a Bethpage diner and ended it back on Long Island after Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Binghamton and Manhattan. Kathy Hochul spent her Sunday in the city with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Zohran Mamdani. The polls both camps sprinted against never moved: Hochul ahead by double digits.
The last day of a governor's race is a geography problem, and the two campaigns solved it in opposite directions. Republican Bruce Blakeman, the Nassau County executive, ran an eight-city closing tour that began Sunday in Oswego, Albany and Rensselaer County and spent Monday crossing the whole state: breakfast at the Embassy Diner in Bethpage, walking the tables with attorney general candidate Saritha Komatireddy and comptroller hopeful Joseph Hernandez, then Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Binghamton and Manhattan before a final return to Long Island, hours before the polls opened.
Gov. Kathy Hochul's close was a city close. She spent Sunday in New York City alongside Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Mayor Zohran Mamdani, working the electorate that decides New York statewide races — registered Democrats outnumber Republicans six million to 2.8 million in the state, with more than 3.3 million voters unaffiliated, and no Republican has won statewide office here since George Pataki in 2002. Blakeman's counter-argument, made to reporters along the tour, was that this is a turnout election and that Democrats and independents are moving his way.
The standings neither sprint changed: Siena's final survey put Hochul at 54 percent to Blakeman's 40 among likely voters, Quinnipiac had it 55 to 41, and Marist 53 to 42 — and more than two-thirds of likely voters told Siena they expect Hochul to win. Underneath, the race split exactly on what voters care about: Hochul led 72 to 27 among voters who named the economy their top issue, while Blakeman led 71 to 28 among those focused on immigration, Quinnipiac found. Down the ticket, the same surveys had Attorney General Letitia James ahead of Komatireddy 54 to 39 and Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli ahead of Hernandez 59 to 32.
What the sprint ran on was turnout already banked: more than 1.2 million New Yorkers voted early in the first six days alone, roughly double the same stretch in 2022, and the city's final early count reached 690,526. Hochul's 2022 win was the closest New York governor's race since 1994, a margin her party credits to low city turnout — which is why one campaign ended in diners across the upstate map and the other ended in the five boroughs. The polls close at 9 p.m.; the argument ends with them.
