With only a few campaigning days remaining, Republican incumbent Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg still maintains a double-digit lead in recent polls over Democratic nominee City Comptroller William C. Thompson.
A Monday, October 26 Quinnipiac University Poll showed that Bloomberg led Thompson by 18 percent – 53 to 35 among the 1,088 likely city voters surveyed.
“I think this is more or less what we expected,” said Michael Krasner, an associate professor of political science at Queens College, who referenced Bloomberg’s incredible financial advantage, ability to blanket the airwaves with advertisements and being the “known” candidate as likely reasons for the sizeable leads.
The Quinnipiac Poll numbers come on the heels of a Marist Poll that had Bloomberg ahead by 16 percentage points a few days earlier. However, Thompson said he was not concerned about apparently losing ground in the polls, and is only focused on the November 3 Election Day.
“I think we have seen polls continue to be inaccurate so I’m not worried about polls,” Thompson told The Courier after a press conference in Jackson Heights talking about his plan to improve mass transit on Tuesday, October 27. “What we have to do is reach out and get our voters out and that’s what we are going to do with a huge get-out-the vote operation.”
Bloomberg, who is running on the Republican and Independence ballot lines, is seeking a third term in office after initiating a change to the term limits law allowing himself and current City Councilmembers to run again this year – something the Thompson campaign has used as one of their focal points of criticism for Bloomberg.
Bloomberg has spent the last week campaigning throughout the city including making a stop on Friday, October 23 to campaign at the LeHavre apartment complex in Whitestone. There, Bloomberg touted better schools, lower crime rates and more parks and green spaces as only a few of the areas the city has improved during the last eight years.
“What we’ve got to do is keep working,” said Bloomberg, who has vowed to work just as hard or even harder if he is elected to a third term in office.
The Thompson camp has continued to point out that, thus far, Bloomberg has spent more than $83 million of his own money for the campaign, and experts believe he may spend $100 million before the end.
“It’s not only the money,” said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. “Sure, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has spent a zillion dollars on this campaign – but he seems to have spent it wisely.”
Krasner said that the Thompson campaign has employed the right strategy by trying to cast Bloomberg as a billionaire who is out of touch with regular New Yorkers, however, it has not done enough to make the case that Thompson is a plausible alternative to Bloomberg.
“You can’t beat somebody with nobody, and for most New Yorkers Bill Thompson is still a nobody,” Krasner said.
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