Rep. Charles Rangel has a comfortable 13-point lead over his nearest rival in Harlem’s bitterly-fought congressional primary — with the election just five days away, a new poll shows.
Rangel is ahead of state Sen. Adriano Espaillat, 47 to 34 percent in the Siena College/NY1 poll released Thursday night.
Last month, the veteran congressman was leading 41 to 32 percent in the same poll.
Pollster Steven Greenberg said Rangel’s growing margin was largely due to his strong name recognition in a district he has served for more than four decades.
Greenburg noted that just 15 percent of registered Democrats voted in the primary two years ago, when Rangel also faced Espaillatand emerged on top by a slim 1,086 votes.
“If this race sees a similarly low turnout, it will likely be decided by which campaign better turns out it supporters,” Greenberg said. “Espaillat has very little time to close a significant gap and the movement in the last month indicates how large a challenge that is.”
Rangel enjoyed a 56 percent favorability rating to Espaillat’s 42 percent.
But one–third of likely voters said they don’t know enough about the challenger to offer offer an opinion.
The congressman remains immensely popular among blacks, leading Espaillat by an overwhelming 76 to 6 percent among that voting bloc.
Espaillat is winning likely Latino voters, 53 to 29 percent.
Espaillat’s camp dismissed the results as unreliable, saying their own internal polling has their candidate winning by a “small but healthy” margin.
“Polls don’t capture the strength of our ground game or the passion of our supporters,” said Espaillat campaign spokeswoman Chelsea Connor. “We’re confident that our broad coalition of support will bring us victory on Election Day.”
Espaillat aides also said that the poll’s methodology was off because it said Dominicans would account for 60 percent of the Hispanic vote, when they were 72 in 2012.
Espaillat would be the first Dominican-American in Congress and is expected to grab the overwhelming majority of Dominican voters.
A third candidate, Michael Walrond, received 7 percent.
The fourth candidate, Yolanda Garcia, received 4 percent.
The poll was conducted between June 14 and 18 and surveyed 707 likely primary voters in both English and Spanish. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.