Why These Blowout Polls Between Lhota And De Blasio Can Become Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

Two polls out this week showing Bill de Blasio beating his GOP opponent Joe Lhota by 41% and 43% respectively.

We have almost seven weeks to go before the election and and a lot can happen in that time for Lhota to turn this race around.

The problem for him, however, is that if he doesn't turn the race around sooner - like in the next three weeks - and have some polls come in showing him substantially narrowing the gap between himself and de Blasio, the big money donors who might ordinarily jump into the race with outside expenditures that supplement Lhota's campaign won't bother.

Billionaires like the Koch Brothers didn't become billionaires by throwing their money away on losing causes and they'll find somewhere else to put their political donations if they think Lhota doesn't have a shot.

As Azi Paybarah wrote at Politicker:

Poll findings themselves may have a detrimental impact on Lhota's candidacy, by depressing his ability to raise money for his campaign, and motivate donors to fund independent expenditure groups which can spend unlimited amounts of money attacking his opponents and promoting his candidacy.

That's the danger here for Lhota.

Add the polling issues to the self-inflicted "mall cops" crack Lhota made that pissed off the Port Authority cops and their families and the toll hike he levied on Staten Islanders that has him struggling in what should be a slam dunk win for him in New York's most Republican-friendly borough and you have Joe Lhota having a very deep hole to climb out of to make this race competitive.

He'll never get out of that hole if the big money donors shun him or decide not to spend unlimited amounts attacking de Blasio.