If you’ve been wondering why New York City, with its overwhelmingly Democratic electorate, has been electing Republican mayors since 1993, one place to start looking for an answer would be in the results of the Quinnipiac University poll released yesterday. The poll surveyed 932 New York City registered voters and asked, “Mayor Bloomberg is trying to balance the city budget. Do you think he should raise taxes, cut spending, or borrow money?” What really caught our notice was the tally of the Democrats who answered the question. Only 21% of the city’s Democrats support a tax increase, while 44% favor spending cuts, according to the poll. Meanwhile, the Democrats on the City Council, led by Gifford Miller, have been nearly unanimous in their support for tax increases and in their strenuous opposition to serious spending cuts. The city’s voters may maintain Democratic Party affiliation for historic and personal reasons, or because of national wedge issues like abortion, gun control and the environment. But when it comes down to taxing and spending — the city decisions that really matter — most Democrats agree with the Republican mayors like Rudolph Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg who have been cutting taxes or resisting tax increases. The Democrats on the City Council, meanwhile, may be in touch with their big financial backers in the city’s public employee unions, but they are out of touch with the Democratic electorate as a whole. This disjuncture is likely to become only more dramatic as the city’s racial composition changes. The Quinnipiac poll showed that 25% of white voters supported a tax increase and 45% supported spending cuts, while, among black voters, 10% supported a tax increase and 52% supported spending cuts. Among Hispanics, 12% were for tax increases and 50% preferred spending cuts. The sample numbers are smaller for blacks and Hispanics, so the margin of error is larger. But the numbers are mightily suggestive, and in concord with other polls indicating support among minorities for lower taxes, like a Businessweek poll from the summer of 2000. We’d be against tax increases — indeed we are for tax decreases — and for spending cuts even if that were an unpopular position. But it is nice to know that on this issue the people are ahead of the politicians.