This morning, we have a New York Times/Siena College poll in a place that might surprise you: New York City.
Overall, Kamala Harris leads Donald J. Trump, 66 percent to 27 percent. Although it’s a significant advantage, it also represents a major decline in Democratic support since 2020, when President Biden won the city, 76-23.
If it held, it would represent the worst showing for a Democratic presidential candidate in the city since 1988.
New York City does not figure prominently in the electoral calculus of either campaign, but it may nonetheless be an important part of the story of this election.
A strong Trump showing in the city would offer important clues about what’s propelling his gains nationwide. The poll adds to the evidence that his gains are concentrated in the places where Republicans fared well in the midterm elections, suggesting that the pandemic and the upheaval in its wake left a lasting mark on the electoral map — and may blunt Mr. Trump’s advantage in the Electoral College.
As we’ve reported all cycle, Mr. Trump has made important gains among Black, Hispanic and younger voters, but it increasingly seems his gains will vary greatly from state to state or even city to city. Our recent poll of nearby Philadelphia, for instance, showed Ms. Harris doing just fine there (79-16).
Of course, there are many differences between the two cities, but they’ve voted very similarly for decades. Just a few years ago, no one would have guessed that New York and Philadelphia would part political ways. The polls suggests that something is driving them apart — or perhaps more accurately, drove them apart.
Sometimes it can be hard to say why seemingly similar places drift in different directions, but in the case of New York City there’s no shortage of explanations for Democratic woes. The city and state have been something of a train wreck for Democrats in recent years, including Kathy Hochul’s surprisingly weak performance in the 2022 governor’s race — she won by only six points — and the indictment of Mayor Eric Adams last month.
We asked about many of the issues facing the city on today’s survey, — you can read my colleagues’ work on it here — but the presidential poll results suggest that the Democrats’ woes have reached as far up the ticket as they could go.
You may already know that the political pileup stretched back to races for Congress. In the midterm elections, Democratic candidates for U.S. House won the New York State popular vote by only nine percentage points on average, compared with Mr. Biden’s 23-point victory in 2020. The collapse was rivaled only by Democrats’ disastrous showing in Florida.
The Democrats’ poor results in New York State arguably cost them control of the U.S. House. At the time, many blamed poor turnout. This was undoubtedly a contributing factor, but the polling this cycle suggests the party’s weakness ran and still runs much deeper — deep enough to reach the presidential election, something few would have guessed at the time. On its face, it doesn’t make much sense: Why would Ms. Hochul’s unpopularity make people vote for Mr. Trump? That’s not the way presidential politics works, especially for someone as well known as Mr. Trump.
If the Times/Siena poll results describe reality, something bigger is going on. The New York City result fits a national pattern — one where Mr. Trump excels in the places where Republicans fared best in the midterm elections, while Ms. Harris holds up elsewhere.
This is very unusual. Midterm results usually don’t have a lot of predictive value for the next presidential election. If anything like it holds in the final result, it will suggest that 2022 wasn’t your usual midterm: It was the first midterm election in the wake of the pandemic and the upheaval that followed, from Jan. 6 to rising prices to the end of national abortion rights.
Many of these extraordinary events were felt very differently in different parts of the country or among different constituencies. No place in the United States was hit harder in the first pandemic wave than New York City. The city was also prominently affected by a rise in crime, and the arrival of a wave of migrants. Conversely, abortion rights were safe in New York; the Republican stop-the-steal and MAGA movement were a distant threat, too.
If the polls are right, all of this had a lasting effect on the political allegiances of many Americans. For New Yorkers, the effect was a shift to the right.
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