Schumer Election Landslide Could Break Mark Set by Moynihan, Poll Shows
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ALBANY – A new poll finds that 72% of registered voters in New York are supporting Senator Schumer for reelection, putting him on track to win by a record margin on Tuesday.
The poll, released yesterday by Marist College, gave Mr. Schumer a commanding 56-point lead over his little-known and underfunded Republican challenger, Howard Mills, who was the choice of 16% of those surveyed. The Conservative Party candidate, Marilyn O’Grady, was at 6%.
The figures suggest that Mr. Schumer could surpass the margin of victory achieved by Senator Moynihan in 1988, when he received 68% of the vote. The gap between Mr. Moynihan and his GOP opponent, Robert McMillan, was about 2 million votes, which Mr. Moynihan said at the time was the widest in the history of the U.S. Senate.
A landslide of similar proportions would strengthen Mr. Schumer’s claim on the Democratic nomination for governor in 2006, should he choose to enter that race. It would also be a humiliating defeat for leaders of New York’s Republican Party, who anointed Mr. Mills as their candidate but did relatively little to support his campaign.
“You cannot send a man smaller than David to go take out Goliath with no slingshot,” a Democratic political consultant, Hank Sheinkopf, said yesterday. “And that’s what the Republicans have done.”
After defeating Senator D’Amato in 1998, 54% to 44%, Mr. Schumer has traveled the state endlessly, visiting all 62 counties in each of the past six years. He also embraced his predecessor’s “Senator Pothole” style of government, emphasizing constituent service and intervening in a long list of local issues.
He raised $25 million for this campaign, more than any other candidate for the U.S. Senate. Mr. Mills, an assemblyman from Orange County, raised only 2% of that amount, or $580,000. Dr. O’Grady, an ophthalmologist from Garden City, Long Island, collected $47,144.
Mr. Schumer, like other New York Democrats, stands to benefit from a surge in voter registrations and higher-than-usual turnout because of the presidential election. On the other hand, Mr. Mills, whose name remains unfamiliar to most New Yorkers, will get a boost from party-line voting on Election Day. The obscure Republican who challenged Mr. Spitzer for attorney general in 2002, Dora Irizarry, managed to get 30% of the vote despite raising little money and doing little campaigning.
According to the Marist poll, Mr. Schumer is leading not only in Democrat-friendly New York City, but also in the suburbs and upstate areas. He even garnered the support of 46% of the Republicans polled, compared to 38% for Mr. Mills. Mr. Schumer also received a record-high approval rating, scoring better than any major elected official in New York.
Of those polled, 61% rated him either good or excellent, compared to 57% for Senator Clinton and Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, 41% for Governor Pataki, and 39% for President Bush. The state comptroller, Alan Hevesi, had the lowest approval rating at 35%, largely because more than a third of those who answered said they did not know enough about him to offer an opinion.
In the presidential race, the Marist poll found that Senator Kerry has broadened his lead among New York voters, receiving support from 54% of those polled compared to 38% for President Bush, a difference of 16 points. In a Marist poll last month, shortly after the Republican convention, Mr. Kerry was ahead by eight points, 48% to 40%.
The telephone survey of 817 registered voters, conducted on October 25 and 26 by the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion at Poughkeepsie, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5%.