Siena poll: Hochul’s lead over Stefanik in likely election matchup shrinks

Gov. Kathy Hochul is still ahead of her likely Republican opponent in next year’s gubernatorial election, but that lead is narrower than it was at the start of the summer, a new Siena poll found.

Forty-five percent of the registered voters surveyed said they’d back Hochul, giving the incumbent Democrat a 14-point lead over GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik. A June poll from Siena gave Hochul a comfortable 23-point lead over Stefanik, who is not officially running yet, but said last spring that she was “strongly considering” a bid for the governor’s mansion.

Independent voters were “closely divided” but leaned toward Stefanik after backing Hochul in June.

Stefanik’s gains can mostly be explained by the fact that “Republicans, not surprisingly, came home,” according to Siena pollster Steve Greenberg. Just 55% of Republicans backed Stefanik in June, compared to 75% who now say they’d vote for the congresswoman.

But with 15 months before election day, a lot could change before voters head to the polls, Greenberg says.

“The poll is not a Magic 8 ball. It doesn’t predict what’s going to happen in the future. It just tells you where we are,” Greenberg said. “Ten thousand things are going to happen now between now and the election that are going to affect how voters think about the candidates.”

The poll wasn’t all good or all bad for either Hochul or Stefanik.

Both had underwater favorability ratings. Only 29% of respondents said that Stefanik had the experience necessary to serve as governor. Hochul’s job approval rating hit an all-time high of 53%, a number that was still within the margin of error of the 50% she garnered in June’s poll.

Perhaps most crucially, 46% of respondents said they were “not very” or “not at all” familiar with Stefanik. That gives the North Country congresswoman the opportunity to make a good first impression — but it carries political risks, too, Greenberg said.

“The downside for Stefanik is that, because she’s not known, there’s room for Hochul and the Hochul camp and Democrats in New York to try and define her rather than let her define herself,” Greenberg said. “So we’ll have to see what happens over the coming months, but there’s certainly an opportunity for Stefanik to grow.”

Stefanik touted the poll in a post on the social platform X, writing that the “worst governor in America is losing independents, cratering support and in political free fall.”

Hochul had not addressed the poll on social media by Tuesday morning.

Whoever the GOP nominee is, they’ll face an “uphill battle” in a state where Democrats enjoy a 2-to-1 party registration advantage over Republicans.

No Republican has governed the Empire State since Gov. George Pataki declined to run for a fourth term in 2006.

Hochul beat Republican candidate Lee Zeldin by just 6.5 points in the 2022 gubernatorial election, a relatively narrow margin in what is considered a solidly blue state.

Zeldin, who is now serving as the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under President Donald Trump, centered his campaign on crime and public safety concerns. He was thought to have had the best odds of unseating a Democratic governor in the Empire State since Pataki defeated incumbent Gov. Mario Cuomo in 2002.

So far, only one candidate, Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado, has officially launched a campaign against Hochul. Fifty percent of Democratic respondents to the Siena poll said they would vote for Hochul in next year’s Democratic primary, while only 15% backed Delgado.

Jeongyoon Han with the New York Public News Network contributed reporting.