The New York City Mayor's race:One week from election day

There were a flurry of polls in the New York mayoral race in mid August and then nothing until last week. Now, we have four new polls, but two of them are from the same company, Quinnipiac, so I only count three, using the most recent Quinnipiac, one from amNew York-News 12 and a third from Siena, the polling company hired by The New York Times.
 

Both Quinnipiac and Siena polled mid-month and late month, so I will give their numbers in the form

Candidate recent% (previous %)

Quinnipiac - 9/1 recent, 8/12 previous
De Blasio 43% (30%)
Thompson 20% (22%)
Quinn 18% (24%)
Other 12% (17%)
None of the Above 7% (7%)

Siena - 8/28 recent, 8/7 previous
De Blasio 32% (14%)
Thompson 18% (16%)
Quinn 17% (25%)
Other 16% (19%)
None of the Above 17% (26%)

Both of these polls agree that August was a very good month for De Blasio and a bad month for almost everyone else. We also have a poll from amNew York-News12, who only polled once in August.

amNew York-News12 - 8/27 recent, no previous
De Blasio 29%
Thompson 24%
Quinn 17%
Other 17%
None of the Above 13%

The "median" poll can be a little difficult to judge in a multi-candidate contest. If we consider the race De Blasio vs. Thompson, the Siena poll is the median with a 14% lead.  In this case, De Blasio has about a 27% chance to cross the 40% threshold and win outright, and the Siena poll says the race for second is relatively close, but still gives Thompson a 65% Confidence of Victory over Quinn.

Here are the Confidence of Victory numbers from all three polls.

Quinnipiac
De Blasio outright win: 99.9%
De Blasio-Thompson run-off: 0.08% 
De Blasio-Quinn run-off: 0.02%

Siena
De Blasio outright win: 27.2%
De Blasio-Thompson run-off: 47.3% 
De Blasio-Quinn run-off: 25.5%

amNew York-News 12
De Blasio outright win: 0.1%
De Blasio-Thompson run-off: 99.9% 
De Blasio-Quinn run-off: 0%

There should be at least one more poll from Marist by the end of the week, but unless Siena is right, Quinn is pretty much out of the race.

 

Another New York City mayoral poll.

A new poll for the New York City races was released Thursday night, this one from Marist, yet another small East Coast college that does polling.(The earlier polls were from Qunnipiac and Siena, also small East Coast colleges.)

The latest poll, completed on August 14 sampling 679 Democrats, puts City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and public advocate Bill DiBlasio in a tie at 24% and former comptroller William Thompson in third with 16%.

The rules of the race are that if any single candidate polls over 40%, he or she is declared the winner and goes onto the general election. If not, the top two vote getters are in a run-off.

If the election were held when the poll was taken, one candidate getting over the 40% mark is highly unlikely, so it's really a race for the top two spots. A week ago, that looked like Quinn and Thompson, but the two polls this week say Quinn and DiBlasio. The event that is considered the turning point is the decision by a judge that "stop and frisk" policies are unconstitutional and DiBlasio's long held objection to the policy in New York City is his key advantage.

Marist also polled the Republican race, where Joe Lhota has a large lead but not polling over 40% yet. He could win without need for a run-off depending on how the undecided vote breaks, but he is not given a very good chance against whoever survives the Democratic race.

There will certainly be more polls between now and the election and I will give updates when available.

More election news:Results from New Jersey, new polls for New York City mayor

The results from the primary for the New Jersey special election came in and there were no surprises. Cory Booker won the Democratic nomination handily with 59% while his closest rival had 20%. Republican Steve Lonegan beat his single opponent Alieta Eck 79% to 21%.

The Booker vs. Lonegan election will be held on Wednesday, Oct. 16. Two months is a long time in politics, but currently Booker is leading comfortably in all the polls that have asked about this particular match-up.
  

The New York City mayoral race is much more up in the air. The Democratic primary polls taken this month by Siena and Quinnipiac don't agree on much except the fall of Anthony Weiner from the top tier of candidates.

The rules of the primary state that if a single candidate gets more than 40% of the vote, he or she is declared the winner. Otherwise the top two candidates are in a run-off. Here are the results for the top three candidates in the most recent polls.

Siena (8/2 to 8/7)
Quinn 25%
DiBlasio 14%
Thompson 16%

Quinnipiac (8/7 to 8/12)
DiBlasio 30%
Quinn 24%
Thompson 22%

My Confidence of Victory method does have ways of turning each of these sets of numbers into probabilities of victory for all three of these candidates, and as you might expect the Siena numbers from earlier in the month would make Quinn the prohibitive favorite while the Quinnipiac number would hand the big favorite role to DiBlasio.

Quinn has been the favorite for several months, never polling less than second. Similar to the 2012 Republican presidential primary, there is a remarkable amount of what I call "churn" in the numbers. If I stretched the analogy a little farther (perhaps too far, I can't be sure), this would put Christine Quinn, the openly gay speaker of the New York City Council in the role of Romney, while Weiner and DiBlasio, the  New York City public advocate and considered the most liberal candidate, in the roles of the many Not Romneys that the Republican field had to offer.

The last five elections for mayor have been won by a Republican (Giuliani) and a former Republican turned Independent (Bloomberg), but the current assumption is that the star power is gone from the Republican ranks currently and the Democratic primary winner will move to Gracie Mansion.

I've read analyses by Harry Enten and Nate Silver, both of whom are very keen on historical track records. Maybe it's because I'm older than either of them or I've just seen so many predictions done on flimsy data turn out so badly, but I'm not convinced the historical record is the right thing to look at. An issue like "stop and frisk" has a strong chance to be a game changer, and that would work to DiBlasio's advantage.

Enten believes it's all about ethnic politics, which gives Thompson,who is black, an edge over DiBlasio. Silver thinks Quinn's position as front runner for most of the year gives her the inside track. I claim no expertise about New York politics, but I believe more strongly in event driven elections being the correct modern model and that historical data is often so much balloon juice.

I'll post again when there is new data.

I will keep track of these races through the primary on September 10, the likely run-off on October 1 and the general election on November 5.