Liz Benjamin at the DN, the first lady of NYS political blog, piled up all the Senatorial polling pronostigations in this short post today.
Today's Q poll finds New Yorkers split almost right down the middle - 40-41 - on whether Caroline Kennedy is qualified to replace Hillary Clinton in the US Senate, but they nevertheless believe by a wide margin (48-25) that Gov. David Paterson will choose her.
That's in keeping with last week's Siena poll, which found that while Cuomo had a slight edge over Kennedy, 30-26, but 31 percent felt Paterson would pick her to succeed Clinton compared to 16 percent for the AG.
Offered a choice of Caroline Kennedy, AG Andrew Cuomo, Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand (it's not clear why she was included and not some other congressional hopeful, like, say, Rep. Steve Israel, who is traveling in Iraq with Paterson at the moment) or "someone else," 33 percent of poll respondents went for Kennedy, 29 for Cuomo, 4 for Gillibrand, 24 for some anonymous other and 10 percent said they had no idea.
Cuomo has a slight edge over Kennedy with upstate voters (31-27), while she has a wide lead in NYC (42-37) and they're neck-and-neck at 30 percent each in the suburbs.
The AG has a better favorable/unfavorable rating (55-11 with 32 percent saying they haven't heard enough about him to form an opinion) than Kennedy (46-17, 36).
Republicans prefer Cuomo (33-20), which would bode well for him in a hypothetical general election, but Democrats back Kennedy (41-27), which indicates she would blow him away in a potential primary. He has a slight three percentage-point lead with independents.
Recall that a Marist poll released earlier this month found New Yorkers deadlocked on the subject of which political dynasty they would prefer to see win out in the battle for Clinton's seat, with 25 percent picking Kennedy and another 25 going for Cuomo.
