Politics on the Hudson

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has a 22-percentage-point lead in New York over Republican challenger John McCain, a Siena College poll today found.

The big lead comes after McCain shockingly cut Obama’s lead in New York to five percentage points in a Siena Poll just three weeks ago.

But more in line with New York’s heavily Democratic enrollment edge, Obama now has a 58 percent to 36 percent lead over McCain, according to 631 likely voters polled by Siena this week.

The poll also found that heading into the vice presidential debate tonight, Republican candidate Sarah Palin’s favorability dropped from 46 percent to 36 percent from last month’s poll. Democratic candidate Joe Biden’s favorability was at 54 percent compared to 46 percent last month.

And by a margin of 51 percent to 21 percent, voters in New York thought Obama won last Friday’s first debate. Seventy-nine percent of New York voters plan to watch the vice presidential debate tonight.

“New York appears to be flexing its ‘blue’ again,” said Steven Greenberg, spokesman for the Siena New York Poll.

“Whether it’s the state of the nation’s economy, the ebbing favorability of both McCain and Palin, or the fact that the majority of voters think that Obama won the first debate, New Yorkers have given the Democrats a huge lead.”

The poll was conducted Sunday through Tuesday and had a margin of error of 3.9 percentage points.

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