New York Poised to Back Harris and Gillibrand
by J. Andrew Sinclair, Ph.D. & Kenneth P. Miller, J.D., Ph.D.
Harris leads Trump in NY presidential contest.
Our poll results indicate that Democrats are highly likely to win the top-of-the-ticket contests in New York. At the presidential level, Vice President Kamala Harris is running well ahead of former President Donald Trump in the state he long called home, leading Trump by a 55%-36% margin. The poll was designed by the Rose Institute of State and Local Government at Claremont McKenna College (CMC) and implemented by YouGov, Oct. 7-17. It includes 1,089 New York registered voters and has a margin of error of 3.41.
President Joe Biden won New York’s presidential vote over Trump in 2020 by a wide 61%-38% margin. By contrast, Democrat Kathy Hochul won election as governor two years ago with only 53% of the vote. While Harris is expected to prevail in New York, much of the interest in the top-of-the-ticket contest in this cycle focuses on whether turnout and enthusiasm will be sufficient for Democrats to carry the handful of competitive U.S. House seats across the state. Results closer to New York’s 2022 midterm election would help Republicans retain New York’s closely contested House seats, while results closer to prior presidential contests would help Democrats flip those seats.
Our survey asked undecided and third-party voters whether they lean toward Trump or Harris; adding those responses to the candidate totals results in Harris leading Trump 58%-38%–close to Biden’s 2020 margin. Restricting the analysis to likely voters does not change the percentages.
Gillibrand opens wide lead in U.S. Senate race.
Incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is also very likely to defeat her Republican challenger Mike Sapraicone. Gillibrand leads in our survey by a wide 57%-32% margin. The race’s likely outcome is driven by the fact that New York voters overwhelmingly identify as Democrats rather than as Republicans (55%-34%, counting independents and third-party voters that lean toward a major party).
For Republicans to be competitive in New York, Democrats would have to be more seriously divided than they appear at present. Despite sustained press criticism regarding issues such as congestion pricing and scandals in New York City, Democratic voters still largely approve of Democratic officeholders. Only 18% of New York Democrats disapprove of Governor Hochul, a percentage comparable to the 14% of California Democrats who disapprove of Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom). Only 11% of New York Democrats disapprove of the Biden Administration, and only 5% think Trump did a better job as President than Biden. Perhaps more surprisingly, only 9% of New York Democrats disapprove of Democrats in the state legislature in Albany.
Compared to the other states with oversamples in this year’s CMC-Rose Institute Poll, Democrats are closer to winning in Florida and Texas than Republicans are to making meaningful inroads in New York.
Crosstabs
Reviewing the cross-tabs for voter presidential preference in New York, Harris outperforms Trump among nearly every demographic group, including both men and women and voters of all ages, races, ethnicities, and education levels. The only exception is white men, who prefer Trump to Harris by a 49%-44% margin.
Beneath Harris’s broad-based support in New York, however, significant and familiar differences emerge. For example, the survey reveals a pronounced gender gap, with women voters supporting Harris at a much higher level (60%-32%) than men do (50%-42%). Similarly, the “diploma gap” is pronounced, as those with a graduate education support Harris more uniformly (63%-27%) than those with at most a high school education (47%-44%).
These results underscore that, even in a deep blue state like New York, underlying demographic differences shape political attitudes.
The Survey
The data for this survey comes from the CMC-Rose Institute Fall 2024 Poll. The survey was designed by the Rose Institute of State and Local Government at Claremont McKenna College (CMC) and implemented online by YouGov between October 7, 2024 and October 17, 2024. The total sample of 1,089 registered voters was collected as part of a larger national survey, including respondents from the national sample and an additional 1,000 voters as a New York oversample. The data was weighted by gender, age, race, education, and past presidential vote. YouGov created the “modeled frame” (the target YouGov uses in selecting respondents for inclusion and uses to create the survey weights) by using the American Community Survey (ACS) public use microdata file, public voter file records, the 2020 Current Population Survey (CPS) Voting and Registration Supplements, the 2020 National Election Pool (NEP) exit poll, and the 2020 CES surveys, including demographics and the 2020 presidential vote. The survey has a margin of error of 3.41 for the registered voters. To create a likely voter weight, respondents were screened for vote intention, and the data reweighted; the likely voter sample has a margin of error of 3.43.
The CMC-Rose Institute 2024 Poll is funded by the Rose Institute of State and Local Government at Claremont McKenna College, Claremont McKenna College Faculty Major Grant Award, and Betsy Sinclair, Washington University in St. Louis.
For more information, visit www.roseinstitute.org/2024-poll or contact CMC-Rose Institute Poll Director J. Andrew Sinclair at asinclair@cmc.edu.