NYC Mayoral Race: Polls and Comments
The New York Times Editorial Board endorsed Kathryn Garcia for Mayor, although she only received 6% in a recent New York Post Poll: https://nypost.com/2021/05/05/new-poll-has-eric-adams-edging-out-andrew-yang-for-nyc-mayor/ The poll was commissioned by City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, and the results show:
Eric Adams 21%
Andrew Yang 18%
Scott Stringer 15%
Shaun Donovan 8%
Maya Wiley 7%
Kathryn Garcia 6%
Dianne Morales 6%
I was interested to see what people thought of the endorsement, and if the conversation about the endorsement would align with the poll numbers or not. I read through 107 comments on the subReddit r/NYC that referred to the endorsement and linked to the article. I also read 146 comments on the article on the New York Times. Both sets of comments were overwhelmingly positive about Kathryn Garcia, indicating that the people who like her paid attention to the endorsement. On r/NYC, she received 19 positive comments and four negative ones. On the NYT article, she received 47 positive comments and 13 negative ones. Among those, six people claimed to know her personally and five were very positive and one was negative. Of the people who knew her personally, two worked with her at city hall. One said she was a great manager and the other said she was terrible.
Most people who suggested that they will be voting for Kathryn Garcia seemed to prioritize her experience in the government and housing. Because of rank voting, some people mentioned that she was in their top five or mentioned other people they plan to vote for. Concern for housing meant people were also interested in Donovan or Morales.
For the rest of the field, I made this chart. I noted when people mentioned that they preferred a certain candidate or when they specified someone they did not like.
Andrew Yang received the most negative attention among the people discussing the race in these two spaces. Stringer was more positively discussed in the NYT and Donovan in r/NYC than one would expect from the polls. Maguire was also mentioned positively and negatively (one time each) on r/NYC, and twice positively on NYT, although he was not mentioned in the poll results. A couple of people on r/NYC admitted to being undecided.
The first debate is scheduled for Thursday, May 13th at 7 p.m. Perhaps all of this will shift afterwards. I’ll have to check back.
Quick note: this review is a preliminary analysis without quality control. Both sets of comments were accessed on Tuesday, May 11 between 9:30–11:30 a.m. If you would like a more in-depth analysis, please contact me. Thank you!
