Today, Quinnipiac shows us why:
When Quinnipiac University surveyed the field two weeks ago, they found ex-Gov. Eliot Spitzer with a dominating 19-point lead over Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer. Well, things have changed a little bit in their latest poll.
Mr. Stringer and Mr. Sptizer are now tied with 46 percent of the vote each among likely Democratic voters.
If the Quinnipiac poll is anywhere near accurate, Spitzer's got problems.
Stringer has all the unions locked up, the party establishment.
Those are guaranteed Stringer votes - the party establishment and the unions are going to use their GOTV operations to get their voters to the polls.
Spitzer, meanwhile, was polling very well in the past, but he's got to get those supporters to the polls himself.
If the race is near tied going in to Primary Day, I would give Stringer the edge in winning the race.
Spitzer, by reaching out to the UFT yesterday, is hoping to persuade them from dropping a couple hundred grand in negative ads on him next week.
Doubt the strategy is going to work.
Mulgrew seems to despise Spitzer almost as much as he despises the UFT rank and file.
But we'll see.
This election cycle gets more and more interesting, doesn't it?
First Quinn is the presumptive nominee, then Weiner enters and shakes things up,Weiner actually goes ahead in the race before imploding in scandal, De Blasio grabs the lead but he's got to bring it on home in the next 12 days.
In the comptroller's race, Stringer looked like a shoe-in before Spitzer saw Weiner polling so well and decided to enter the race half a week before the deadline to file. Spitzer goes ahead big in the polls, horrifying the establishment and the corporate press, but now, suddenly the race is tied again.
What a year.
I suspect we will have more surprises in both the mayor's race and the comptroller's race before this is all over.
UPDATE: An AM New York/News 12 poll finds the race in a statistical tie too:
Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and former Gov. Eliot Spitzer are locked in a virtual dead heat in the Democratic primary race for New York City comptroller, with Stringer beating Spitzer 2-to-1 among white voters, according to an amNewYork-News 12 poll results released Thursday.
Spitzer has 46 percent support among Democrats likely to vote in the Sept. 10 primary while Stringer with 43 percent support, the poll conducted by Penn Schoen Berland shows. Ten percent of voters were undecided.
Stringer has a distinct edge among white voters, 65 percent support compared to Spitzer’s 29 percent, the poll shows.
“I don’t think this is pro-Stringer. This is all anti-Spitzer,” said pollster Mike Berland. “I think we're seeing the whites rejecting Spitzer.”
Spitzer still has an advantage among black voters, 59 percent to Stringer’s 25 percent.
Spitzer's in trouble.
Stringer's got the unions walking voters to the polls for him.
Spitzer's got to get them there himself.
Maybe he can use the strategy these two BOE candidates in Alabama used to get out the vote?
"Mulgrew seems to despise Spitzer almost as much as he despises the UFT rank and file." Great line. Brought a smile to my face.
ReplyDeleteThanks - it's the truth. You can see how much Mulgrew despises the membership when he;s forced to talk to them. Unless you get down on your knees and worship him, he cuts you off when you try and speak, ignores you, insults you or just generally acts like he doesn't care anything about you.
DeleteThat's been my experience - and the experience of other teachers in my building too.
Can you do a pro/con of both candidates. I rarely hear of anything great that Springer accomplished. Since you have a very thorough knowledge of politics, it would great for the blog readers to see who's the best candidate to be comptroller. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteThe pros for Spitzer - Wall Street hates him and he hates them. He put a lot of effort to put pressure on the hedge fundie/Wall Street crooks in jail when he was A.G. He was modestly successful at that. Cuomo, on the other hand, prosecuted nobody who brought about the '08 collapse - he was too busy hitting them up for donations for his Albany run.
DeleteThe cons for Spitzer - he's a charter school fan, he raised the charter cap, he's got a Students First hack as his p.r. guy. Also, he's a freaking psycho - utterly uncontrollable. He probably can't even control himself.
Stringer, the pros - he put Patrick Sullivan on the PEP, he talks a good game when it comes to education.
The cons - he's a political hack, he has no real accomplishments to speak of for his entire political career, the Sullivan pick for PEP is essentially meaningless because the mayor has the votes he needs to push through whatever he wants. You can bet if that Sullivan vote mattered to what the mayor wanted, he would make sure Stringer appointed somebody that gave him what he wanted.
In the end, Stringer's a hack and a whore, Spitzer's a psycho who likes whores.
The business criminals and the union criminals all came together to back Stringer. They hate Spitzer. If the measure of a man is the enemies he makes, Spitzer is the guy I want. Alas, there is that charter school thing and Students First hire which makes me unable to support him.
In the end, Stringer's a hack and a whore, Spitzer's a psycho who likes whores.
ReplyDeleteMade me smile. I'm going with Spitzer. Don't you think he was caught (with pants down, so to speak) by the same crowd that doesn't want Liu to be the next mayor?
I know Spitzer is not perfectly in our court, but the business and union "criminals" working in sync to get rid of Spitzer have some reason to try to get rid of him again.
I'm leaning that way for the very reasons you cite. His list of enemies - well, they should be everybody's list of enemies...
Delete