Republican Joe Lhota and Democratic Council Speaker Christine Quinn are the front-runners to win their party’s respective nominations for mayor, according to a new poll released today.
Lhota, the former MTA chairman and top deputy to former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, grabs 23 percent of the GOP primary vote, the Quinnipiac University survey found. Supermarket mogul John Catsimatidis receives 9 percent, followed by Tom Allon with 5 percent, ex-Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion with 3 percent and Doe Fund founder George McDonald with 2 percent.
But the race is still wide open because of a majority of GOP voters are still undecided or don’t know the candidates.
On the Democratic side, Quinn holds a comfortable with 35 percent of the vote. Public Advocate Bill deBlasio garners 11 percent, former city Comptroller Bill Thompson gets 10 percent and current city Comptroller John Liu, 9 percent.
But the poll shows that Lhota – or any other Republican – faces an uphill climb in heavily Democratic New York City, despite nearly 20 years of non-Democrats Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg running City Hall.
All the Democratic candidates trounce Lhota in head-to-head matchups by better than three-to-one.