Poll: Lazio has lead, but it’s tenuous
With 12 days and counting until the Republican gubernatorial primary, former Rep. Rick Lazio holds a 12-point over Buffalo developer Carl Paladino, a Quinnipiac University poll released this morning shows.
But Lazio’s 47 percent to 35 percent lead may be fragile. Nearly 20 percent of registered Republicans remain undecided and nearly half—49 percent—say they might change their minds by Sept. 14. The poll was released after Liz Benjamin reported that Paladino plans to finally pull the trigger on the $10 million he pledged to spend on the race and saturate the state media market.
“With many of his supporters open to changing their minds, Rick Lazio has a shaky lead,” said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. “The people who like Carl Paladino are more likely than Lazio’s voters to have made up their minds to stick with him. But an awful lot of voters don’t know much about him. Can he convince enough voters that he’s the Republican to run against Andrew Cuomo with a big TV blitz in the next two weeks? We’ll have to wait and see.”
Both candidates remain largely unknown to voters. Paladino has a 45 percent approval rating, but 47 percent of voters said they don’t know enough about him. Lazio has a 58 percent approval rating among Republicans, but 26 percent say they need more information.
Polls show both Republicans would be crushed by Democratic candidate Andrew Cuomo.
In the race for the Democratic primary for attorney general, a whopping 77 percent of New York Democrats say they don’t know which of the five candidates they would vote for when asked the open-ended question of who they support. Eight percent of Democrats picked names of people who weren’t even running.
“The five-candidate Democratic primary for attorney general is still way up in the air. It’s a big job, folks. Look what happened to the last New York State attorneys general. But only 9 percent of Democrats have named a candidate who is on the ballot,” Carroll said.
The five Democrats in the race are Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice, State Sen. Eric Schneiderman of Manhattan, Assemblyman Richard Brodsky of Westchester County, former Insurance Superintendent Eric Dinallo and Bronxville lawyer Sean Coffey.
The poll, conducted between Aug. 23 and Aug. 31, surveyed 359 Republicans with a margin of error of plus or minus 5.2 percent and 866 Democrats with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percent.
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