Tuesday, July 2, 2024
Year : 2, Issue: 31
Vice President Kamala Harris has a 14-point lead over former President Donald Trump among likely voters in New York, according to a Siena College poll released on Tuesday that shows the new Democratic candidate gaining ground over her Republican rival.
In the first public survey of likely New York voters taken since President Joe Biden dropped his reelection bid last month, 53% of respondents said they back Harris, compared to 39% who support Trump.
“The change at the top of the Democratic ticket has had a noticeable, while not dramatic, effect on the horse race,” Siena pollster Steve Greenberg said in a statement.
Trump’s numbers held steady since the previous Siena poll, conducted in late June. But Harris’ showing surged compared to Biden, with new support coming primarily from Democratic and independent voters. Her 14-point lead is still notably smaller than Biden’s margin of victory in the state in 2020.
Crucially for Democrats, the new poll showed Harris picking up support in the New York City suburbs, where Democrats and Republicans are battling over a handful of marginal districts that tipped the House to GOP control in 2022. In a head-to-head race, Harris is running even with Trump in the suburbs, 47-47%, according to Siena. That’s a significant change from the college’s June poll, whose results showed Trump crushing Biden in the same region, 48-35%.
The Democratic Party in New York has long relied on its presidential candidates to run up the score at the top of the ticket. That can create a trickle-down effect for the party’s candidates down the ballot.
Harris’ 14-point lead in the latest Siena poll trails what other Democratic candidates have put on the board in previous election cycles. In 2020, Biden defeated Trump by 23 percentage points in New York, which was slightly higher than Hillary Clinton’s 22-point margin of victory in the state in 2016.
Source: Gothamist
