NEW YORK CITY (NewsNation Now) — There’s a new frontrunner in New York City’s Mayoral Democratic primary, according to a new NewsNation/ Emerson College poll.
The former commissioner for NYC’s Sanitation Department, Kathryn Garcia rose from 5% when the polling began March 6 to 21% in the most recent poll. Conversely, Entrepreneur Andrew Yang went from the March leader at 32% to 16% in current polling.
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams has consistently sat between 18-20% over the last three polls. Currently, he is at 20%.
Candidates including New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, former counsel to Mayor de Blasio Maya Wiley and nonprofit executive Dianne Morales are all at 10%, 9% and 7% respectively.
The New York Times Editorial Board endorsed Garcia for mayor May 10 saying: “It is Kathryn Garcia who best understands how to get New York back on its feet and has the temperament and the experience to do so.”
New York City’s mayoral race primaries will be the first chance for voters to use the ranked choice voting system. Voters will have to rank five candidates in order of preference with the winner being the person with the most support after several rounds of results being counted and candidates with less support being eliminated.
Demographically, Yang does the best with those between the ages of 18-29 in the first round of voting with 47% of them supporting him. Garcia is supported by 27% of those in the 18-29 age range.
45% of white voters support Garcia in the first round and eventually 86% by the final round of voting. Adams remains strongest with African Americans with 33% support in the first round and 84% by the last round.
More Hispanic voters support Adams than Garcia for the first round (26% vs 17%), but by the last round Garcia ends with more votes than Adams (53% to 57%).
When asked what issue was most important to voters, crime came first at 20%. Housing came second at 17%. Homelessness and COVID-19 were tied for third.
The New York City Board of Elections announced Tuesday that on primary night they will provide unofficial election returns, but will not announce ranks choice results until a week later.
About the poll:
The PIX11/Emerson College NYC Mayoral poll was conducted May 23-24, 2021. The sample consisted of New York City registered voters, n=895, with a Credibility Interval (CI) similar to a poll’s margin of error (MOE) of +/- 3.2 percentage points. The data sets were weighted by borough, age, education, race, and party registration based on a 2021 turnout model. It is important to remember that subsets based on gender, age, party breakdown, ethnicity, and region carry with them higher margins of error, as the sample size is reduced. Data was collected using a cellphone sample of SMS-to-web and an online panel.
