Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams continues to lead the field nearly a week out from primary day. | Spencer Platt/Getty Images
NEW YORK — Eric Adams continues to dominate the field of Democratic hopefuls as New Yorkers head to the polls for early voting ahead of the June 22 primary to replace outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio, according to a new poll sponsored by WNBC, Telemundo 47 and a news outlet.
Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, would win with 56 percent by the 12th round of ranked-choice voting. Previous city Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia, the candidate who lasted until the final round, loses to Adams by 12 points, Marist College found in polling 876 likely primary voters from June 3-9. Marist questioned respondents in English and Spanish on cellphones and landlines.
Maya Wiley, an attorney who worked for Mayor Bill de Blasio before becoming an MSNBC legal analyst, begins the race with 17 percent in the first round and loses with 27 percent in the 11th ranking, the poll found.
Wiley’s campaign got a boost when the campaigns of two other progressive candidates — Scott Stringer and Dianne Morales — faltered and she picked up their left-leaning endorsers. She received her most high-profile backing from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on June 5, so pollsters had another four days to test its impact.
Garcia, however, appears to have been the biggest beneficiary of voters defecting from the Stringer campaign. The comptroller only won 7 percent of Manhattan, a vote-rich borough where he lives and grew up as a politician, to her 28 percent.
Previous presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who led nearly every poll for months after jumping in the race in January, ends in fourth place at 19 percent after 10 rounds of ranked-choice tabulations. Yang had been running a campaign as an outsider with fresh ideas. But Monday’s poll found that voters wanted a candidate with government experience by a 64-to-24 margin.
No one else in the eight-way field ever breaks double digits.
Garcia performed best with liberal white voters, especially in Manhattan, while Wiley picked up significant support from Democrats who identified as very liberal. Neither coalition was enough to overtake Adams, however, who won older, nonwhite moderates and conservative Democrats in the outer boroughs.
The poll was commissioned by WNBC, Telemundo 47 and a news outlet ahead of the next and final debate at 7 p.m. Wednesday night, in part to see where the voters stood on some of the big issues driving the race. (WNBC-TV will air the first hour, from 7 to 8 p.m. which will also be carried on nbcnewyork.com, the NBC 4 App as well as on their Apple TV and Roku channels. It will also be streamed on a news outlet. The second hour will be online only.)
Crime has consistently ranked among the top issues for the electorate, though Monday’s poll found voters held positions that did not fit neatly into a particular ideology.
Respondents overwhelmingly reported feeling safe in their neighborhoods while a smaller majority said they felt safe on the subway. Nearly 70 percent of those asked wanted to see more cops in the subways. And a third said the best way to reduce crime was to move resources out of the police department and into community services, making it the most common response.
New York City is debuting ranked-choice voting citywide this year, following a referendum that voters overwhelmingly approved in 2019. As a result of the complicated tabulations, few independent polls have been conducted throughout this cycle.
Tuesday’s poll looked to counter fears that Black communities would be ill-prepared to use ranked-choice voting. Around three-quarters of Black and white likely voters said they were ready to use the new system, though only around 60 percent of Latinos said the same.
Voters also appeared to make adept use of the new paradigm, picking like-minded candidates as backups in case their first choice gets eliminated. Adams voters were most likely to rank Yang second and vice versa, for example. Both are trying to appeal to moderate voters. The same relationship held for Garcia and Wiley.
Other pairings were more surprising. In April, candidate Paperboy Love Prince released a music video titled "Eric Adams Please Get Out of My Room" — parodying an old video Adams made as a state Senator — and appeared at a recent debate dressed as Adams. The strategy, however, may backfire. Prince voters were most likely to pick Adams second, according to the poll, meaning their votes would help propel Adams to first place.