For a range of different reasons, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is the clear favorite to win the June 24 New York City Democratic mayoral primary.
My firm, Honan Strategy Group, has just completed a comprehensive citywide public opinion survey of Democratic primary voters, including the critical “surge” group of younger, progressive voters. Beyond this, we conducted several rounds of exhaustive analysis of the New York City voter file to examine voting patterns, as well as recent election returns.
The conclusion we reach is Cuomo is the clear frontrunner, should he decide to become a candidate. That isn’t to say he won’t face headwinds, but there appear to be many advantages in his corner.
Like Mayors Abe Beame and David Dinkins before him, Mayor Adams is wounded, politically speaking, and very unlikely to win reelection. Multiple data points from our polling about Adams and his job performance demonstrate incredibly high levels of dissatisfaction. His continuing to cozy up to President Trump is a further disqualifier for city Democrats. Celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day at the Trump inauguration was for Democrats the equivalent of dancing with the devil. In our poll, 85% of Democrats say Adams should not be reelected and 64% believe he is already too close to Trump.
Democratic primary voters have a strong sense of fear and anxiety about the state of the city today. In our poll, 75% say they believe the city is in crisis and 93% rate how city government is run today as only fair or poor. Voters want government managerial experience that Cuomo can tout in abundance.
The current system of ranked-choice voting in the primary favors candidates with high name recognition and the ability to mine votes from across a broad coalition. Cuomo remains universally known, his favorable numbers continue to go up, and he draws votes from virtually every demographic group in the city.
Ranked-choice voting also undermines those candidates who go negative and the only way to go after Cuomo is going hard negative, and that approach doesn’t work well under ranked-choice voting. Moreover, the Cuomo negatives are already out in the public domain and baked into voters’ perceptions of him.
Our opinion survey as well as the other recent public and private polls all reach the same conclusion. When Cuomo is included in the potential primary ballot, he is the overwhelming favorite of Democratic voters. Cuomo handily leads the field with 35% of the vote and wins 58% of the vote in the 6th round of our ranked-choice voting simulation.
We tested a comprehensive issue battery to understand which candidate is seen by voters as being best able to address 12 key issues facing New York City. Cuomo is perceived by voters to be the candidate best able to address every single one of the 12 issues that we evaluated the candidates on. Cuomo leads the race for mayor because of the durability of his association for delivering on key issues.
In terms of who can best address the main issue facing the city — a combination of crime, violence, and quality of life cited by 45% of voters — just 12% believe Adams is the candidate who can best address it, putting him in a tie with former city Comptroller Scott Stringer. However, Adams, a former cop, and Stringer both trail considerably behind the 45% of voters who believe that Cuomo can best address the issue of crime.
The voter persona of the likely June 24 electorate is older, female, significantly non-white and Jewish, and resides outside of Manhattan and Brownstone Brooklyn. The outer borough working class, not the Manhattan elite, will decide the winner and that’s the coalition of Cuomo’s electoral successes again and again.
Cuomo is benefiting from frequent news exonerating him and his administration. In politics, timing is everything and the wind seems to be filling up Cuomo’s sails at the perfect time.
With the New York City electorate as heavily Democratic as it is, the winner of the Democratic primary election is tantamount to being elected mayor in November. The data is clear: if Cuomo declares himself a candidate for mayor, he stands the best chance of winning the race.
Honan runs the Democratic polling and data analytics firm Honan Strategy Group. Honan is also co-president of the New York Metro Chapter of the American Association of Political Consultants. His firm isn’t currently working with any current or potential mayoral campaign.