On Tuesday, February 13th voters in New York’s third congressional district will go to the polls to choose a successor to the disgraced George Santos. The race pits former Democratic representative Tom Suozzi against Nassau County legislator Mazi Melesa Pilip. The good news for polling nerds like me is that there are two high quality polls on the race for us to analyze. Both the Emerson College Polling/PIX11/The Hill and the Sienna College Newsday polls have found that Suozzi has a slim (four and three point) lead over Pilip.
In particular, the Sienna College Newsday poll paints a picture of a very inhospitable place for Democrats. If the presidential election was held today, a 47% plurality of voters in the third would vote for former President Trump while 42% would back President Biden. This is quite a reversal from the 2020 presidential election when 54% of voters in the third supported candidate Joe Biden. Significantly, Suozzi manages to pick up one in ten (10%) of those who would vote for Trump in the presidential election.
Suozzi and Pilip are statistically tied in the Nassau County part of the district (46% to 45%) while Suozzi dominated in Queens with 53% of the vote to Pilip’s 36%. Among Jewish voters, Suozzi has a significant advantage (55%) over Pilip (42%).
Immigration has been perhaps the biggest issue in the third and 49% feel that Pilip will do a better job of “addressing the influx of migrants into the United States” while 40% prefer Suozzi.
Voters over age 50 should according to the Sienna College Newsday make up just over a third (67%) of the electorate. Suozzi holds a single point advantage over this voting block (47% to 46%).
Special elections are extremely hard to poll accurately. The problem is that there is a lot of uncertainty about who will turn out. The first thing a pollster does is when putting a poll together is to draw the sample size — in other words what will the electorate look like? So, of course, the logical thing to do is look at similar elections in the past. The problem here is that for New York’s third congressional district there is no past example to study. As far as I can see this is the first special election ever in the Third. Will the turnout be like a regular congressional election, or will turnout increase to resemble a presidential election? I think that you could make a case for either possibility. The bottom line is that polling is both art and science. The assumptions Sienna College Newsday used seem all very logical, but we live in unpredictable times.
Heading into election day, you must give Suozzi a very slight advantage. He is running well against a political climate that is hostile to Democrats. Should the Democrats falter in New York’s third congressional district it may foreshadow worse news for Democrats across the board in November.
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