The most other surveys, which have shown Mamdani leading Cuomo by between 10 and 16% in next week’s mayoral election.
Conducted between this past Saturday and Monday, it shows Mamdani clinching 50% compared with 25% secured by Cuomo. Republican mayoral nominee Curtis Sliwa, who has consistently ranked third and last in the race, netted 21% support in the survey, with another 5% of voters undecided.
In addition to putting Mamdani far ahead of Cuomo, the poll marks one of the first predicting that the Democratic nominee would attract support from at least half of voters participating in Tuesday’s election.
By contrast, the last Emerson/PIX11/The Hill poll from Sept. 10 showed Mamdani leading the race with 43% support, compared with Cuomo at 28% and Sliwa at 10%.
Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, said Mamdani’s surge and Cuomo’s setback in the latest survey can in part be attributed to the opinions of Black and older voters.
“Mamdani appears to have built a coalition across key demographics, increasing his margin among Black voters since last month, from 50% to 71%, whereas Cuomo dropped 10 points among Black voters since September,” Kimball said. “Mamdani continues to have a base of young voters; 69% of voters under 50 support him, whereas 37% of voters over 50 support Mamdani, while 31% support Cuomo and 28% Silwa.”
Mamdani critics have said he won’t have a mandate to enact his left-wing agenda — including pledges to freeze the rent for stabilized tenants and jack up taxes on millionaires — if he doesn’t secure support from at least a simple majority of voters.
Speaking after a Thursday afternoon campaign stop at a senior center in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Mamdani dismissed the idea that falling short of the 50% threshold would hamper his ability to push through his agenda, many aspects of which depend on action from the state.
“Winning this race in and of itself is a mandate to deliver for New Yorkers,” he told reporters.
Despite the edge the Emerson poll suggests he has over Cuomo, Mamdani also said he planned to continue with canvassing efforts in the final days of the campaign.
“Polls give us a snapshot in time, it’s great when there’s a good one, we look past it when there’s a bad one, but really all they are are a prediction,” he said. “It’s up to us to actually win this race.”
Cuomo, meantime, waved off the Emerson results, saying pollsters “have no idea” what’s happening on the ground amid record-breaking early voting turnout.
“They have never seen this volume of turnout, which is great, which is great, and it’s all across the city, and I think the polls have no idea what they’re talking about, because they have never seen this kind of turnout,” Cuomo said during a campaign stop in the Bronx with Mayor Adams, who dropped out of the race last month and later endorsed the ex-governor.
Early voting started Saturday, and Emerson’s latest inquiry was released after more than 370,000 voters had already cast ballots in the high-stakes 2025 contest for City Hall, according to tallies from the Board of Elections.
The poll, which has a margin of error of +/- 3.8 percentage points, asked a total of 640 New Yorkers who had either already voted or were very likely to.
Those quizzed who had already voted supported Mamdani by a 33-point margin, 58% to 25%, while those who had yet to cast their ballots broke for Mamdani by a 19-point margin, 45% to 26%, per the poll.