CNN’s data guru Harry Enten delivered harsh news to New Yorkers banking on an Andrew Cuomo victory in the Big Apple’s mayoral race, saying polling indicates that they are living in a “fantasy land.”
The chief data analyst said Thursday that polling averages show frontrunner Zohran Mamdani at a whopping 17 percentage points ahead of the former New York governor.
Cuomo supporters “are living in a bit of a fantasy land if you think you’re going to be overcoming the polling,” Enten said.
The election is set for Nov. 4, with early in-person voting already underway from Oct. 25 through Nov. 2.
As of November, 48% of people chose Mamdani as their pick for New York City’s mayor, while Cuomo trails far behind at 31%, according to Enten.
Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist, seen his polling numbers improve up from 45% in September, while Cuomo is only up one percentage point from that same period.
Curtis Sliwa, the leading Republican in the race and founder of crime prevention group the Guardian Angels, stands at 15% in Enten’s aggregate of polls.
“This race is simply put not close at all,” he said.
Mamdani, son of famed filmmaker Mira Nair, secured many young voters in part thanks to his social media campaign.
“What Cuomo wants is a surge of older voters and younger voters to make up a lower percentage of the electorate than the polls suggest,” Enten said.
But he clarified that this is looking far from likely. A Marist poll projected that voters under 45 years old would make up 38% of all voters, and early voting so far is already reflecting that figure at 36%.
“The overall vote is usually a little bit younger than the early vote suggests,” Enten said. “So this number is likely to climb a little bit.”
The network’s data analyst delivered the final nail in the coffin for Cuomo fans hoping the polling is just flat-out wrong.
“I looked back at all of the final polling dating all the way back since 1989,” he said. “The largest final polling average error was 11 points in 2005.”
However, with Mamdani 17 points ahead, that margin of error would still be enough for him to win.
That 2005 election saw incumbent Republican Michael Bloomberg beating Democrat Fernando Ferrer.
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