Siena is out with the first independent poll of the three-way race for New York’s 22nd Congressional District. They give Republican Claudia Tenney a 35-30 lead over Democrat Kim Myers, while wealthy independent Martin Babinec takes 24. This sample has Donald Trump leading 46-35 in a Utica seat that Romney carried 49.2-48.8. This district has a lower median income and proportion of college graduates than the nation, though that’s still a huge swing towards Team Red. Interestingly, while Tenney is ahead, this poll says she is the most disliked of the three congressional candidates. Tenney, who survived a nasty primary in late June, sports an underwater 36-46 favorable rating, while Myers and Babinec are at 31-26 and 29-24, respectively.
It’s unclear what effect Babinec is having on this race. According to Siena, he’s taking almost an equal proportion of Democratic, Republican, and independent voters. A DCCC poll from a few weeks ago also argued that if Babinec weren’t in the race, his supporters would split evenly between Tenney and Myers. However, Babinec has said that he’ll caucus with the GOP if he wins, and Team Red is acting like he’s taking more votes from Tenney than from Myers.
Both Tenney and the NRCC have run ads attacking him, while the Democratic group House Majority PAC has just trained their fire on Tenney. In fact, HMP is out with another commercial arguing that Tenney has missed too many votes in the legislature, and the votes she did take favored New York City over upstate. The group says they’ve expanded their overall buy to $1.8 million, which is a bit larger than the $1.2 million investment we previously knew about.