{"id":233577,"date":"2025-09-17T10:16:36","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T10:16:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/233577\/"},"modified":"2025-09-17T10:16:36","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T10:16:36","slug":"pollsters-missed-the-mamdani-primary-sweep-can-we-trust-them-in-the-general","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/233577\/","title":{"rendered":"Pollsters Missed the Mamdani Primary Sweep. Can We Trust Them in the General?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article first appeared in our Tuesday, Sept. 16 edition of RANKED CHOICES, THE CITY\u2019s weekly election newsletter. Click here to sign up<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the spring, polls by and large showed former Gov. Andrew Cuomo winning in the primary. That didn\u2019t come to pass, and as the general election approaches, more mayoral polls continue to roll out.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Many of them show Democratic nominee Asm. Zohran Mamdani winning handily. But if the polls were wrong before, how do we know they won\u2019t be again? And which ones should you trust?<\/p>\n

Don Levy, director at the Siena Research Institute, says to remember what polls are \u2014 just a snapshot in time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is our best effort to understand and then report a representative sample of the electorate at this point in time. And things change. This is a fast-moving race,\u201d he told THE CITY.<\/p>\n

It is also an unpredictable election for a number of reasons, polling experts said. Unlikely voters came out strongly<\/a> for Mamdani in the primary and might again, the makeup of primary voters is very different than the general in New York and, perhaps most importantly, questions remain over whether major candidates may drop out.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s been intense pressure from the Trump administration<\/a> and business leaders<\/a> to convince Mayor Eric Adams or Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa to drop out so voters can rally behind Cuomo to beat Mamdani.<\/p>\n

Levy points to the high amount of money coming in, endorsements or non-endorsements from politicians and influencers, and the unpredictability of President Trump and his desire to meddle in this race<\/a>, all factors that could rock stagnant poll numbers.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"ZohranZohran Mamdani canvassers prepare to speak with voters on the Upper East Side, May 21, 2025. Credit: Alex Krales\/THE CITY<\/p>\n

Where things stand: Mamdani way up \u2014\u00a0for now<\/strong><\/p>\n

So far in the race, there have been six high-quality, non-partisan polls about the mayoral race (more below on what makes a high quality poll)\u00a0and all of them show Mamdani ahead.<\/p>\n

The six polls we\u2019re watching, all from academic polling institutions, show Mamdani up between 15% and 22%. They are from University of Massachusetts Lowell Center for Public Opinion<\/a>, Quinnipiac University Poll<\/a>, Marist Poll<\/a>, Emerson College Polling<\/a> and two from Siena.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The most recent poll<\/a> from Marist shows Mamdani with 45% of likely voters, and a poll<\/a> from Siena last week shows a 22-point advantage for Mamdani over Cuomo. That changes a lot, however, if fewer candidates stay in.<\/p>\n

\"\"Mayor Eric Adams held a reelection campaign rally in Chinatown, July 18, 2025. Credit: Ben Fractenberg\/THE CITY<\/p>\n

\u201cAccording to our poll, if Adams and Sliwa had dropped out at this point, the vast majority of people who currently say they would vote for either of those two candidates say that they would prefer Cuomo to Mamdani,\u201d Levy says. \u201cSo, the race goes from a 22-point race to a four-point race, and a four-point race in September is very close.\u201d<\/p>\n

In New York City, low voter turnout can also be a challenge for pollsters. In 2021, only 23%<\/a> of registered voters voted in the general election.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At this point, Levy said, \u201cMamdani is up against kind of a bit of a ceiling, at least in our polling.\u201d. According to the latest Siena poll, he is polling at 46%. Even if Sliwa and Cuomo were to drop out, Siena\u2019s poll only shows Mamdani\u2019s percent moving to 48%, and Cuomo gaining the rest of those votes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Unlike the primary, in the general election, a candidate does not need to hit 50% to win, they just need to secure more votes than the other candidates.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lessons from the primary<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pollsters also face the problem of unexpected voters. In the primary, Mamdani drew a surge of unlikely voters \u2014 voters who had not voted before or had not voted in an election in a while.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe pollsters are always going to be making assumptions about the electorate, predicting what the electorate will look like,\u201d says Matt Taglia, senior director at Emerson College Polling. \u201cAnd most folks got it wrong during the primary. They didn\u2019t necessarily expect such a high youth turnout.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Data for Progress is a non-academic, progressive polling group that is one of the few polling groups that captured Mamdani\u2019s favorability in the spring. While their poll<\/a> showed Cuomo winning the primary by just two points if he were to have faced Mamdani head to head, their poll also showed more people had a very favorable view of Mamdani than they did of Cuomo. To account for Mamdani\u2019s voter base heading into the fall, Data for Progress released two sets of poll data for the general election, one if a more traditional electorate turns out, and another, if there\u2019s another surge of young voters for Mamdani. In both polls, Mamdani is winning, but including the surge of young voters, he is up by an additional four points.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been playing around with different turnout scenarios based on whether it does go back to a November type electorate or whether we could see another surge of youth voters, especially from the Mamdani campaign once some campaigning really kicks up again and gets back into full gear,\u201d Ryan O\u2019Donnell, interim executive director of Data for Progress says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Emerson caught on to Mamdani\u2019s surge the day before<\/a> the primary, showing Mamdani with 32% support closely following Cuomo\u2019s 35%. Taglia credits Emerson\u2019s mixed use methodology in capturing more voters.<\/p>\n

\"MayoralMayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo speaks with voters outside the Lincoln Center older adult center on the Upper East Side, Sept. 4, 2025. Credit: Samantha Maldonado\/THE CITY<\/p>\n

Mixed use methodology combines multiple ways of collecting data to reach the most people and to ensure a poll doesn\u2019t miss a group of voters. For instance, nearly a quarter of young people never answer the phone,<\/a> and a quarter of people over 65 never go online<\/a>. Pollsters should aim to account for all demographics in their survey, and should therefore use more than one means to do so.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe always employ a mixed mode methodology so that we can reach as many people as possible where they are,\u201d Taglia says. \u201cSo we want to make sure that we\u2019re using the same methods of communication as the voters. That means using several different modes of communications, so text messages, phones, and online panels.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, doesn\u2019t think Mamdani voters were missed by pollsters. He notes that polls did show Mamdani gaining momentum as the primary approached, and in polls that cast a wide enough net, younger voters were accounted for.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou always have a case where people who might be not engaged may or may not vote depending on the candidate, and presumably the polling is good enough to pick that up,\u201d Miringoff says.<\/p>\n

Why the general is different<\/strong><\/p>\n

Miringoff notes that polling for the primary versus the general election are very different. The primary uses ranked choice voting, and Mamdani received nearly 100,000 votes from New Yorkers who ranked him lower on their ballots, almost twice as many ranked choice votes as Cuomo received.<\/p>\n

Since the general election includes Republican and independent voters, the pool changes of who is polled and how potent Mamdani voters are. Independents alone account for one in five active voters in New York City.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Miringoff cautions against placing too much importance on polls.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think people put more stock in the polls because they\u2019re interested in what the polls are showing, but to think that people are going to vote or vote differently based on a poll gives it more power than it probably really has with voters,\u201d Miringoff says.<\/p>\n

What makes a highly quality poll, and how to read one<\/strong><\/p>\n

While experts largely agree on the key things to look for when assessing if a poll is legitimate or not \u2014 sample size, who was polled, methodology, transparency, funding, and partisan affiliation \u2014 pollsters have different ways of comparing data. Here are the highlights on the smart way to read a local poll:<\/p>\n