Former Democrat presidential candidate Andrew Yang is in third place in New York City’s mayoral Democrat primary, a PIX11/NewsNation/Emerson College poll released Wednesday found.
The survey, taken June 7-8 among 725 likely Democrat primary voters, showed Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams leading the pack with 23 percent support. Former counsel to Mayor de Blasio (D) Maya Wiley landed in second place with 17 percent, representing an 8 point surge from the May 25 survey. Yang came in third with 15 percent support. Twelve percent remain undecided.
The survey’s margin of error +/- 3.6 percent:
Respondents were also asked to identify which issues should be the mayor’s “first priority,” regardless of who they are supporting. A plurality chose crime, which garnered 31 percent, followed by police reform (12 percent), housing (12 percent), jobs (11 percent), health care (8 percent), the Chinese coronavirus (7 percent), education/schools (6 percent), homelessness (6 percent), and transportation (2 percent).
The survey repents a significant drop for Yang, who led the pack with 32 percent support in the early March poll:
Spencer Kimball, Director of Emerson College Polling said “while the AOC endorsement helped Wiley increase her support, it appears to have come to the detriment of Garcia and Morales. However, the AOC endorsement has not affected the leader of the race, Adams, who has extended his support with two weeks until the election.”
Yang continues to hold strong support with voters under 45, getting 23% of the vote, but struggles with older voters at only 9% support. Yang has plateaued around 15% over the last 3 polls, which suggests his base is sticking with him, but has been unable to capture the 30% he was at earlier in the race when he was leading.
Notably, Yang made waves last month after relaying his vision for granting non-citizens in New York City the right to vote, as Breitbart News detailed:
“Now how can we continue to invest in our democracy to make it better here in New York City. I think we should enable young people to vote starting at age 16,” he said, stating young people “don’t feel like their voices are being heard.”
But Yang did not stop there, and floated the idea of expanding the right to vote to non-citizens.
“The second thing we should do is expand the franchise to non-citizens, lawful permanent residents,” Yang said, describing New York City as a “city of immigrants.”
“And immigrants from the core of so many of our neighborhoods and communities. There are approximately 622,000 lawful permanent residents, you probably think of them as green card holders, who are responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue,” Yang said at the “reforming democracy” event.
“Their kids go to our schools. They supply many of the jobs that we rely upon. They should have a say in the future of their city too,” he continued.
“We can enable green card holders, lawful permanent residents, to be able to vote,” Yang added.
New York City’s primary is June 22.