NEW YORK — Gov. Hochul led her Republican rival, Rep. Lee Zeldin, by 6 points in a SurveyUSA poll released Thursday, the latest signal that a governor’s race once seen as an afterthought in deep-blue New York has turned competitive in the final weeks.
The poll, which mirrored an average of recent surveys, marked a wide swing from SurveyUSA’s last poll of the governor’s race, which was conducted in August and showed Hochul leading Zeldin by 24 points. The new survey, conducted online between last Friday and Tuesday, showed a large gender gap: Hochul led by 16 points among women, but trailed by 12 points among men.
The new data points arrived two days after a pair of polls of the race emerged Tuesday, with Hochul up 11 points in a Siena College survey and 4 points in a Quinnipiac University poll. Democrats have won every New York governor’s race since 2006 by double-digit point margins.
