Weiner, Spitzer Lead In Latest NYC Polls
Both former Congressman Anthony Weiner and former Governor Elliot Spitzer are doing very well in the latest Quinnipiac poll for the respective offices they are running for in September’s Democratic primaries in New York City:
Strong support among black voters propels former Congressman Anthony Weiner to the top of the heap in the Democratic primary for New York City mayor and gives former Gov. Eliot Spitzer a 48 – 33 percent lead over Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer in the Democratic primary race for city comptroller, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.
“Notoriety has earned the ‘Tabloid Twins,’ former Gov. Eliot Spitzer as Client 9 and former Congressman Anthony (Tweets) Weiner, good initial numbers in the polls,” said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
“Whether those numbers hold up in the real poll on Primary Election Day is the big question.”
Weiner gets 25 percent of primary voters, with 22 percent for City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, 11 percent for former Comptroller William Thompson, 10 percent for Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, 7 percent for Comptroller John Liu, 1 percent for former City Council member Sal Albanese and 21 percent undecided, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University poll finds.
Black voters go 31 percent for Weiner, 16 percent for Quinn, 14 percent for Thompson, 11 percent for Liu and 8 percent for de Blasio. White voters go 22 percent for Quinn, 20 percent for Weiner, 16 percent for de Blasio and 12 percent for Thompson.
Weiner gets 29 percent of men and 21 percent of women. The gender breakdown for other candidates generally matches their overall tally.
There is a big racial split and a smaller gender gap in the Democratic primary for comptroller: Spitzer leads 61 – 26 percent among black voters and 47 – 27 percent among Hispanic voters while Stringer leads 44 – 36 percent among white voters.
Men back Spitzer 53 – 33 percent while women back him 44 – 32 percent.
Spitzer gets a 53 – 32 percent favorability rating, with similar racial and gender divides.
For Stringer, 62 percent of Democrats haven’t heard enough about him to form an opinion.
In part, it appears as though, for New York voters, sexual improprieties in a politician just aren’t all that important:
Financial impropriety is a worse offense for an elected official than sexual misconduct, New York City Democrats say 69 – 22 percent. Financial impropriety is worse, women say 66 – 25 percent and men say 73 – 18 percent, white voters say 76 – 15 percent, black voters say 65 – 28 percent and Hispanic voters say 60 – 31 percent.
As unlikely as it may have seemed at first, the idea of Mayor Anthony Weiner and Comptroller Elliot Spitzer is now no longer nearly as ridiculous as it all seemed to be when this all began.
i think the local media want these guys to win just for the daily headline potential!
Ideology trumps the personal, in today’s politics. Which is maybe as it should be. Nothing ridiculous about this at all.
It’s why Diaper Dave was re-elected in Louisiana and Mark Sanford is hiking in South Carolina again.
It’s a Weiner-Spitzer ticket.
Which just makes me happy.
@bill: Obviously you don’t read the “local” media, because the NY Times has been against them, running constant op eds about how icky it all is, and even their news coverage has been pretty strongly slanted towards the critical. And the right wing rags have been blasting them.