Andrew Yang Polls Look Bleak As Eric Adams Favorite to Win NY Primary
New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Yang is facing a bleak outlook ahead of Tuesday's Democratic primary after a number of polls suggested his campaign would end in defeat.
A New York Post poll of likely primary voters, published on Friday, placed Yang fourth, with Brooklyn borough president and former NYPD officer Eric Adams leading the field.
The primary will use a ranked-choice system, allowing voters to rank the candidates based on their preference. As a result, vote counting will take some time and the final results may not be known on Tuesday.
The NY Post poll, in conjunction with McLaughlin & Associates, surveyed 1,000 likely Democratic voters between June 10 and 15.
Adams was the first choice for 21.3 percent of respondents, followed by Maya Wiley on 16.5 percent and Kathryn Garcia on 16.2 percent.
Yang was a distant fourth, with just 9.6 percent of respondents picking the former presidential candidate.
When asked about their second-choice candidate, 12.4 percent opted for Garcia, former commissioner of the city's Department of Sanitation. Wiley, former counsel to Mayor Bill De Blasio, followed with 11.5 percent. Adams was third with 11.4 percent and Yang was joint fourth along with New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer.
Yang was initially considered a frontrunner in the Democratic race but Friday's poll is just the latest survey to show him trailing his rivals.
A WNBC/Telemundo 47/POLITICO/Marist poll of 876 likely Democratic voters, conducted from June 3 to 9, found that 24 percent of respondents picked Adams as their first choice, followed by Garcia on 17 percent and Wiley on 15 percent. Yang came fourth on 13 percent.
That poll simulated the ranked-choice voting system and suggested Yang would be eliminated in the 10th round, having garnered just 19 percent of the vote. It found that Adams would defeat Garcia in the 12th round by a margin of 12 percentage points.
A poll from PIX11/Emerson College taken between June 7 and 8 among 1,162 registered voters gave Adams 23 percent of first-choice votes, followed by Wiley on 17 percent, Yang on 15 percent and Garcia on 12 percent.
The simulated ballot showed Adams winning over Wiley in the 11th round with 58.5 percent to her 41.5 percent. Yang was eliminated in the 10th round with 27.2 percent.
This presents a stark contrast to a PIX11/Emerson College poll conducted in early March, when Yang enjoyed 32 percent support while Adams had 19 percent and Wiley 9 percent.
In May, a Spectrum News NY1/ IPSOS poll found Adams had jumped ahead of Yang. The survey of 906 likely Democratic voters, conducted from May 17 to 31, gave Adams 22 percent of first-choice votes to Yang's 16 percent.
When contacted for comment, the Yang campaign pointed Newsweek to internal polling of New Yorkers who have already cast their ballots in early voting. That shows Yang with a slight edge in first-choice votes, winning 20 percent to Adams' 19 percent, with Garcia and Stringer on 9 percent and Wiley on just 8 percent.
Evan Thies, a spokesperson for the Adams campaign, told Newsweek in a statement on Friday: "Poll after poll, day after day, voters are saying the same thing: Eric Adams is our choice for mayor because he is a blue-collar New Yorker like us with the experience, the vision, and the determination to deliver a safer, fairer and more affordable city for all of us."
