Poll: Andrew Cuomo lead over Zohran Mamdani shrinking in Democratic race for New York City mayor

An opinion poll released Wednesday shows New York City mayoral candidate Andrew M. Cuomo with a winning but narrowing lead over his chief rival for the Democratic nomination, Zohran Mamdani, as voters in New York City cast early ballots.

The poll, by Marist University, shows Cuomo, the state's former governor, is the top choice for 4 in 10 likely voters in the Democratic primary, including voters who are undecided but lean toward a particular candidate. But Mamdani, a state assemblyman representing Astoria, Queens, is in second place, with about a quarter of the vote.

Marist's simulation shows that Cuomo would win in the seventh round of ranked-choice voting, the method used for most citywide elections.

"Andrew Cuomo leads the Democratic primary race for New York City Mayor, but the contest has tightened," Marist said in a news release.

Cuomo is the top choice of 38% of likely Democratic primary voters; Mamdani has 27%. Support for each of the other candidates is in the single digits. A Marist poll in May found that Cuomo was the first choice of 37%, and Mamdani was the first choice of 18%.

Cuomo had a 24-point lead in May in the ranked-choice simulation; now it's down to 10 points.

The latest poll, of 1,350 likely Democratic primary voters, was conducted June 9-12, with a margin of sampling error of 4.3 percentage points. The poll was conducted before Thursday's Democratic debate and other news that could affect the race, such as a cross-endorsement by Brad Lander, the city comptroller, with Mamdani.

Marist Poll director Lee Miringoff told Newsday that since the previous poll, some of the undecided voters chose to go for Mamdani.

"The difference is that it's obviously tighter than it was," Miringoff said.

By Matthew Chayes

matthew.chayes@newsday.comchayesmatthew

Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.