New York Gov. Kathy Hochul leads Republican challenger Bruce Blakeman by just four points in a new poll, a margin that signals deep trouble for Democrats in one of the bluest states in the country.
The survey, conducted by Red Oak Strategic for the pro-Blakeman Strong and Safe super PAC, found Hochul at 47 percent and Blakeman, the Nassau County executive, at 43 percent among 2,000 registered voters polled July 7 through July 12. Ten percent remain undecided. A July 21 memo from the polling firm to "interested parties" laid out numbers that read like an indictment of Hochul's tenure: 56 percent of voters disapprove of her job performance, 58 percent view her unfavorably, and 61 percent say it is time for someone new in the governor's mansion. Only 33 percent believe she deserves another term.
Those figures land in a state where Democrats hold an overwhelming voter-registration advantage and where Hochul's campaign war chest dwarfs her opponent's. Friends of Kathy Hochul, her campaign committee, reported $21 million on hand. The state Democratic Party holds another $22 million, combined, more than four times what Blakeman and the state GOP have raised. Money, in other words, is not the governor's problem. Voters are.
Red Oak Strategic's memo framed the landscape in blunt terms. As the polling firm stated:
"The environment favors a challenger: just 33% say New York is headed in the right direction vs. 57% wrong track."
Hochul's favorability sits at 38 percent favorable against 58 percent unfavorable, a gap that would alarm any incumbent in any state, let alone one where her party controls every lever of state government. Her job-approval split, 39 percent approve to 56 percent disapprove, tracks almost identically with her favorability, suggesting voters who dislike the governor's performance also dislike the governor personally. That is a hard combination to fix with ad spending alone.
Blakeman, by contrast, remains largely unknown. Forty-seven percent of voters told pollsters they had never heard of him or had no opinion. Among those who do know him, his rating was positive. And among independents, the voters who decide close races, Blakeman leads 54 percent to 33 percent, a 21-point margin that suggests Hochul's weakness extends well beyond Republican base voters.
The enthusiasm gap may matter even more than the head-to-head number. Seventy-three percent of Republican voters described themselves as "much more interested" in the governor's race. Among Democrats, only 44 percent said the same. Red Oak's turnout model projected a Republican enthusiasm edge, which could tighten or erase Hochul's nominal four-point lead on Election Day.
One Republican pollster told Newsmax that Blakeman is "far ahead of where Lee Zeldin was at this point in the campaign." Zeldin, the former congressman who ran against Hochul in 2022, lost by a small margin in a race that rattled Democrats and forced the national party to redirect resources into New York. If Blakeman is polling better than Zeldin did at the same stage, the trajectory favors the challenger, even before most New Yorkers learn his name.
That comparison gains weight when set against the broader shift in New York's political landscape. In 2020, Donald Trump lost the state by 23.1 points. In 2024, that margin shrank to 12.6 points, a swing of more than ten points toward Republicans. New York is not turning red overnight, but the ground beneath Democrats' feet has been shifting for years, and Hochul's numbers suggest the erosion has not stopped.
Democrats nationally have faced a string of setbacks that have tested party cohesion. The internal recriminations over the Biden debate collapse revealed a party willing to turn on its own leadership when political survival is at stake. Hochul's vulnerability raises the same question: at what point do New York Democrats decide she is more liability than asset?
The Red Oak poll is not the only survey showing trouble for the governor. A Siena College poll released in June found that 55 percent of New York voters want "someone else" for governor, with only 36 percent prepared to re-elect Hochul, a figure that had dropped from 39 percent the previous month. Siena College pollster Steven Greenberg noted that while Hochul's favorability and job-approval numbers had "hit year-long highs" the month before, Republicans "already very negative toward Hochul, turned even more so on both measurements," Just The News reported.
Among Republicans, 82 percent prefer a different candidate. Among independents, 64 percent say the same. Even 38 percent of Democrats told Siena they want someone other than Hochul, a remarkable number for a sitting governor who faces no serious primary challenge.
The Red Oak poll and the Siena survey use different methodologies and were conducted at different times, and they produce different head-to-head margins. The June Siena poll showed Hochul ahead by 20 points; RealClearPolling's average still lists her up more than 17 points. But the direction of travel is consistent across both: Hochul's personal numbers are weak, voter dissatisfaction is high, and the desire for change is broad.
There is a caveat worth noting. The Red Oak poll was commissioned by the Strong and Safe super PAC, which supports Blakeman. Partisan polls routinely produce results more favorable to their sponsors than independent surveys do. The four-point margin may overstate Blakeman's strength. But the underlying sentiment data, wrong track at 57 percent, disapproval at 56 percent, "time for someone else" at 61 percent, aligns closely enough with Siena's independent findings to suggest the discontent is real, even if the horse-race number is debatable.
Blakeman's financial position improved this month when Madison Square Garden owner James Dolan steered $700,000 to the Strong and Safe super PAC through MSG Entertainment and MSG Sports, campaign filings show. That injection does not close the cash gap with Hochul's combined $43 million advantage, but it signals that major donors see the race as competitive enough to invest in.
The broader question for Republicans is whether Blakeman can convert Hochul's weakness into his own strength before her financial advantage buries him. Nearly half of voters do not know who he is. Name recognition is a solvable problem if the money is there, but Hochul's four-to-one fundraising edge gives her the resources to define Blakeman before he defines himself.
Meanwhile, internal Democratic debates over the party's ideological direction continue to divide the coalition Hochul needs to reassemble. Progressives pushing the party leftward and moderates urging caution create crosscurrents that an unpopular incumbent can ill afford.
Voter frustration in New York is not abstract. Con Edison cut power to a Bronx neighborhood during a July heat wave, the kind of basic-services failure that compounds the sense that state leadership is not delivering. The New York Post reported the poll results alongside a backdrop of cost-of-living complaints and quality-of-life concerns that have dogged Hochul throughout her tenure. The Justice Department's lawsuit against state health officials over a $10 billion Medicaid program adds another layer of institutional dysfunction to a record that voters are already judging harshly.
Republicans have built political momentum in recent cycles by running hard on public safety, affordability, and government accountability, exactly the issues driving Hochul's numbers down. Blakeman's strength in the suburbs and among independents suggests that message is landing in New York, even if the state's deep-blue voter registration rolls still favor Democrats on paper.
Several unknowns hang over the contest. The Red Oak poll did not disclose its margin of error or its methodology, phone, online, or a mix, which makes it harder to evaluate the precision of the four-point gap. Whether RealClearPolling's average, which still shows Hochul up by more than 17 points, incorporates the Red Oak data is unclear.
Blakeman's path depends on maintaining his independent lead, closing the name-recognition gap, and riding the enthusiasm advantage all the way to Election Day. Hochul's path depends on her money, her party's institutional strength, and the hope that voters who disapprove of her performance will still choose her over a Republican they barely know.
Democrats have spent recent months reacting to setbacks with alarm rather than adaptation. If Hochul's team treats a four-point deficit in a partisan poll as noise, they may be right. But if they ignore the 57 percent wrong-track number and the 61 percent who want someone new, they are betting that New York's registration advantage can paper over a governor whom most of her own state's voters have decided they do not like.
A party that needs a four-to-one cash advantage just to hold a blue state it won by double digits four years ago is not a party on offense. It is a party paying a premium for its own failures.
