Zohran Mamdani’s dominant lead in latest NYC mayoral poll shows even more bad news for rivals

Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani holds a dominant 20-point lead in the race for New York City Hall — bolstered by majority support from black, Latino and Asian voters, according to a new poll released Tuesday.

Mamdani leads independent candidate and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo 45%-25% among likely voters as Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa trails with 9% and incumbent Mayor Eric Adams with 8%, the Suffolk University “CityView” poll found.

But in even more bad news as his rivals cling to hopes of an upset victory, the poll shows Mamdani building support among black and Hispanic voters since his huge victory in the June Democratic Party primary over Cuomo and a slew of other candidates.

Mamdani now leads Cuomo better than 2-to-1 among both minority voters, according to the survey.

Some 53% of black voters support Mamdani compared to 21% for Cuomo, 10% for Adams and 2% for Sliwa, the poll found.

Likewise, 52% of Hispanics back Mamdani, compared with 22% for Cuomo, 8% for Sliwa and 7% for Adams, with the rest undecided or supporting other minor party candidates, according to the poll.

And 58% of Asian voters polled support Mamdani, compared with 20% for Cuomo, 9% for Sliwa and 4% for Adams.

White voters are more split but Mamdani is still ahead with 38% backing compared with 30% for Cuomo, 13% for Sliwa and 9% for Adams and the rest backing other minor candidates or undecided.

Both Cuomo and Adams are running on independent ballot lines, with Adams having skipped the Democratic primary as he faced the fallout from federal corruption charges that were eventually dropped by the Trump administration.

Three other candidates on the ballot include Conservative Party nominee Irene Estrada, and independent candidates Jim Walden and Joseph Hernandez.

The results mirror other polls conducted in recent weeks, showing Mamdani with a comfortable double digit lead.

One notable difference is that other polls had Sliwa getting more support.

For example, the Marist University Institute for Public Opinion survey released a week ago had 17% of voters backing Sliwa.

Respondents said the top issues in the mayor’s race are affordability (21%), crime (20%), economy/jobs (14%), housing (9%), local response to Trump initiatives (8%), racism/justice/equality (7%), and schools/education (6%).

“This poll shows that the issues New Yorkers really care about in this election are affordability, crime, and the economy,” said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center.

The Suffolk CityView survey conducted live phone interviews with 500 likely general election voters from Sept. 16-18. The poll has a margin of error of +/- 4.4 percentage points.