A new Quinnipiac poll of the New York City mayoral race with less than a week until Election Day shows Zohran Mamdani on track to win, but with a narrow plurality that underscores the breadth and resilience of the political opposition against him. In short, he’s set to prevail thanks to a divided opposition and backing from an enthusiastic left-wing faction of the electorate — not because he’s winning over hearts and minds in Gotham.

If the polling is accurate, Mamdani would be the first New York City mayor to win without a majority of the vote since John Lindsay in 1969. Mamdani leads former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo 43-33% in the Quinnipiac poll, with Republican Curtis Sliwa tallying 14%. Mamdani, in a sign of his political ceiling, has lost several points of support since the pollster’s survey earlier this month. 

Among Sliwa voters, 55% said that Cuomo was their second choice, while only 7% said the same of Mamdani. If New York City utilized a ranked-choice voting system as it did in the primary, this race would be neck-and-neck.

The Quinnipiac poll finds Mamdani building an unconventional coalition of secular progressives and Muslims in New York City politics, running up the score with voters of no religion (71% support) or of a religion other than Christianity and Judaism (50%). Mamdani struggles badly with Jewish voters, winning just 16% support, while only receiving 28% of the vote among Catholics and 36% among Protestants. 

Mamdani is winning support from just 59% of Democrats, with 31% backing Cuomo — an unusually weak showing for a Democratic nominee. But Republicans are evenly divided between Cuomo and Sliwa, preventing the former governor from capitalizing on Mamdani’s deep unpopularity with GOP voters. Mamdani is tied with Cuomo among independents at 34% apiece. 

There are some indications that the late wave of negative attacks Cuomo has aimed at Mamdani — invoking his embrace of a controversial imam, raising questions about his commitments to fighting Islamic extremism and his ties to antisemitic influencer Hasan Piker — have dented the front-runner’s favorability a bit. Mamdani’s +4 favorability rating in the Quinnipiac poll (45-41%) is a notch worse than his +8 favorability rating (45-37%) in Quinnipiac’s early October poll. 

But Cuomo’s favorability remains decidedly worse, with a 54% majority viewing the former governor unfavorably and 34% viewing him favorably. Cuomo resigned from the governorship amid scandal and allegations of sexual misconduct.

The results suggest that an earlier and more aggressive attack against Mamdani from a better-organized anti-Mamdani coalition could have paid dividends. If the opposition hit Mamdani on his vulnerabilities on crime and safety — especially given his recent tone-deaf comments on the 9/11 terror attack — it could plausibly have laid out a more effective narrative that he’s too extreme to lead the nation’s biggest city.  

But the last-minute nature of the Cuomo attacks feel more like the equivalent of a Hail Mary pass at the end of a football game. 

The one silver lining for Cuomo: There’s only a week of early voting in New York City, and because of the exorbitant cost of airing on New York City television, the swarm of campaign ads doesn’t hit full force until the campaign’s final weeks. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, for the first time in the general election, donated $1.5 million to a pro-Cuomo super PAC, an indicator he sees the race getting closer. 

That means that even though Mamdani remains the clear favorite, Cuomo still has a narrow path to a political comeback if he can convince enough Republican Sliwa voters to quietly cast a vote for him to stop the democratic socialist. 

A new Quinnipiac poll released on Wednesday underscores the growing partisanship over Israel, and the declining sympathies among Democratic voters towards the Jewish state.

The survey asked respondents whether their sympathies were more with Israelis or Palestinians. A 37% plurality said Israelis, 32% said Palestinians and 31% said they don’t know — the narrowest advantage Israel has had since Quinnipiac began asking the question in 2001. 

The slippage was driven mainly by Democrats, who now are overwhelmingly more sympathetic towards Palestinians. Among Democrats, just 12% said their sympathies were more with Israelis while a record 60% said they were with Palestinians. 

By comparison, in November 2023, shortly after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, the Quinnipiac survey found 41% of Democrats saying they were more sympathetic to Palestinians, while 34% said they were more sympathetic to Israelis. 

By contrast, Republicans remain overwhelmingly supportive of Israel and independents are still more supportive of Israelis than Palestinians. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of Republicans are more sympathetic to Israelis, while 7% are more sympathetic to Palestinians. The small share of Republicans more sympathetic to the Palestinians is unchanged since 2023.

Among independents, 38% express more sympathy towards Israelis, 30% side with Palestinians and 31% don’t have an opinion.

The poll also asked respondents about the significance of antisemitism, which voters from both parties agreed was a worsening problem. Nearly three-fourths of voters (73%) said anti-Jewish prejudice was either a “very serious” or “somewhat serious” problem. Nearly half of Republicans (47%) considered antisemitism a very serious problem, compared to 36% of Democrats, and 35% of independents.