Final Polls: Hochul Leads Blakeman by 14 in Siena and 11 in Marist — With the Race Running Even Outside New York City
Two final-week surveys put Gov. Kathy Hochul ahead by double digits statewide, and both say the same thing about where the lead lives: New York City, where she leads 67 to 23, while the suburbs and upstate run virtually even.
The last public polls of the governor's race agree on the headline and on the geography underneath it. The Siena Research Institute's final survey puts Gov. Kathy Hochul at 54 percent and Republican Bruce Blakeman at 40 percent among likely voters. The Marist Poll puts Hochul at 53 percent and Blakeman at 42 percent, with 4 percent undecided. Election Day is Tuesday, November 3.
The methods, for the record: Siena interviewed 807 likely voters from October 19 through 22, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 points. Marist surveyed 1,448 registered voters from October 22 through 25, with a likely-voter margin of error of 3.9 points. Both surveys were conducted before early voting began — the 572,786 New Yorkers who had already voted through Saturday were casting ballots into a race these numbers had already described.
Inside the statewide lead is a split state. Siena has Hochul leading 67 to 23 in New York City, while the two run virtually even in the downstate suburbs, 49 to 47, and upstate, 49 to 48. Siena has Hochul winning independent voters 51 to 40 — a reversal from September, when Blakeman led that group — and its pollster, Steven Greenberg, said in the published release that Blakeman is quickly running out of time to close a gap that is growing rather than narrowing. Asked who they expect to win regardless of their own vote, 68 percent of Siena's respondents and 71 percent of Marist's said Hochul.
The Blakeman campaign does not accept the picture. It disputed the Marist findings, saying the poll undersampled Republicans and that the race is closer — a claim this desk records without adopting, the way it records the polls themselves: as measurements with samples and error margins, not results. The two surveys even disagree about the governor's standing — Siena measures her favorability above water for the first time, at 51 percent, while Marist has her at 41 percent favorable against 51 percent unfavorable. What neither disputes is the arithmetic of Tuesday: a challenger running even outside the city needs the city itself to move, and the early vote says much of it already has.
