Kathy Hochul holds an 11-point lead over Bruce Blakeman in the race for New York governor, with 53% of registered voters backing the Democratic incumbent to Blakeman's 42% — but buried in the same poll is a 29-point gender gap that shows just how differently men and women are voting this fall. The numbers, drawn from a survey of 1,361 registered voters statewide, paint a race that looks comfortable on paper for Hochul yet remains sharply contested beneath the surface.
According to the New York Post, women voters are breaking heavily for Hochul while men are backing Blakeman, producing the 29-point split documented in the October 2026 Marist Poll. That same survey found Blakeman leading among independent voters, 49% to 42%, even as Hochul and Blakeman are essentially tied among suburban voters at 48% apiece. New York City remains Hochul's fortress, where she leads 69% to 24%, according to the poll.
Upstate Breaks for Blakeman, Narrowing the Playing Field
Regional breakdowns show just how polarized New York has become. Per Newsday, Blakeman holds a 51% to 43% lead over Hochul among Upstate New York registered voters, a region he is counting on to offset Hochul's overwhelming advantage in the five boroughs. The poll's margin of error is 3.6%, and it was conducted between October 1 and October 4, 2026.
Economic anxiety is also shaping the race. The same Marist survey found 40% of New York registered voters say their family finances have worsened over the past year, compared to 18% who report improvement and 41% who saw little change — a split that both campaigns are leaning on in their closing messaging.
Enthusiasm Gap Could Shape Turnout
Even with Hochul's wider overall lead, her supporters appear less fired up than Blakeman's. Newsday's reporting on the same Marist data found that 80% of Blakeman supporters describe themselves as “very enthusiastic” about their candidate, compared with 52% of Hochul backers — a gap that could matter if turnout runs lower than expected in a midterm cycle.
Blakeman, for his part, dismissed the poll outright. He called the Marist survey “woke” and predicted record turnout in New York City while speaking at a Queens event, according to the Post. Hochul struck a different tone, telling reporters Wednesday in New York that a double-digit lead is meaningful, even as she emphasized the race still has four weeks to go.
How This Race Stacks Up Against Other Polls — and 2022
The Marist numbers sit in the middle of a wider range of recent polling. A Siena University poll conducted in September gave Hochul a 9-point lead over Blakeman, while a Quinnipiac University poll from the same month showed her ahead by 19 points. History offers a cautionary note for Hochul's camp: a 2022 Marist poll gave her a 10-point lead over Republican Lee Zeldin, yet she ultimately won that race by just 6.4 percentage points — 53.1% to 46.7%, the narrowest New York gubernatorial margin in decades, according to Wikipedia.
Structural factors still favor Hochul. Statewide registration data from USAFacts shows Democrats held roughly 6.0 million registered voters as of September 2026, or 47.8% of the state's electorate — a structural hurdle for any statewide Republican candidate. Blakeman built his political career in Nassau County, where he was first elected county executive in 2021 and won re-election in 2025 by 12 points in the Democratic-leaning suburb, per City & State New York.
National Figures Descend on the Race
Both parties are deploying marquee surrogates in the campaign's final stretch. President Donald Trump is scheduled to headline a rally with Blakeman in Syracuse on Friday, marking his first campaign stop in the Central New York city since 2016, according to the Finger Lakes Daily News. Trump's visit lands in a region where Blakeman already holds a sizable polling edge, making Upstate turnout central to the GOP's closing strategy.
On the other side, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez campaigned alongside Hochul in Dutchess County this week, part of a push into Hudson Valley swing territory, per Spectrum News NY1. Hoodline previously reported on Debra Messing backing Blakeman at a Manhattan fundraiser, underscoring how celebrity and political surrogates alike are being deployed to energize turnout on both sides.
That Hudson Valley battleground carries its own warning signs for Hochul. An October 2026 Emerson College survey of New York's 17th Congressional District found her with a 40% job approval rating and 49% disapproval in the key suburban district — though that approval figure is up from just 26% in October 2024, according to Emerson Polling. With four weeks left before voters decide the race, the gap between Hochul's statewide cushion and her vulnerabilities in specific regions and demographics suggests the contest remains far from settled.
