New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani had higher favorable ratings among New Yorkers likely to vote in the midterm elections than did other prominent Democrats in the state, according to the latest Quinnipiac University poll.
The Quinnipiac survey found that 46% of likely voters viewed Mamdani favorably and 36% unfavorably. That 10-point spread was larger than New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who also had a 46% favorable rating but a 43% unfavorable one.
Mamdani had 60% favorable and 29% unfavorable ratings among likely city voters and was viewed favorably 62% to 20% by New York state likely voters under 35.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) had 41% favorable and 36% unfavorable ratings, with more than a fifth of the electorate, 21%, saying that it hadn’t heard enough information about her to make a judgment.
Ocasio-Cortez has been mentioned as a potential primary challenger to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) in 2028. Schumer was viewed unfavorably, 51% to 34%. But among Democrats, he had 51% favorable and 33% unfavorable ratings.
U.S. President Donald Trump had a 30% favorable rating and a 63% unfavorable one.
Jewish leaders have said that Mamdani’s anti-Israel rhetoric is putting Jews at risk. The mayor, who campaigned on having Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrested, has since said that he lacks that authority. He asked federal agencies to detain the Israeli leader.
Mamdani has also said that he won’t protest Netanyahu’s visit to the city on Thursday to address the United Nations General Assembly and walked back his apparent recommendation to New Yorkers to picket the Israeli premier.
Netanyahu said this week that he was going to the United Nations to “fight for the truth about our heroic soldiers” and to “expose the truth” about Mamdani.
“When it comes to Benjamin Netanyahu, I have described him as I believe him to be—a war criminal and an architect of a horrific genocide of the Palestinian people,” the mayor told CNN.
In this fall’s gubernatorial contest, Hochul led Nassau County executive Bruce Blakeman, the Republican nominee, by 19 points, 58% to 39%, as 49% of likely voters named the cost of living or the economy as their most important issue. (In a new Siena poll, Blakeman was down just 9 points.)
“Four years after Kathy Hochul won the governor’s race by single digits, she appears positioned, at the moment, to have a wider lane on the road to being reelected,” Quinnipiac University poll assistant director Mary Snow stated.
“Likely voters prefer her to be in Albany handling the cost of living and the economy, their top concerns, and that is putting her at a sizable advantage over Republican challenger Bruce Blakeman,” Snow said.
The poll of 1,026 New York likely voters was conducted Sept. 17-20 and had a margin of error of plus-or-minus 4.1 percentage points.
