A matter of snow inches
Suozzi-Mazi dead heat for today’s elex: poll
Democrat Tom Suozzi leads Republican Mazi Pilip by a razor-thin margin in a poll released on the eve of a special election to replace expelled Long Island Rep. George Santos.
The new poll obtained exclusively by The Post on Monday night showed Suozzi in the lead by just 1 percentage point with 46% support in the hostly contested race, compared to Pilip’s 45% backing. Nine percent of respondents remain undecided.
The survey of 500 likely voters was conducted by polling firm J.L. Partners and has a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points, indicating a dead heat ahead of Tuesday’s election.
The firm queried constituents who have already voted or are likely to vote in New York’s 3rd Congressional District— which covers parts of Nassau County and northern Queens.
With undecided voters out of the mix, the race is evenly split between both candidates.
‘Unpredictable’
“This race is too close to call. Everything hinges on who turns out on election day,” James Johnson, co-founder of JLP, said.
“If Republicans can get out their vote, then the race is genuinely competitive,” he added. “But weather and the closeness of the race makes this one unpredictable in the extreme.”
Pilip and Suozzi each made their last minute appeals to voters Monday as the forecast called for 1 to 3 inches of snow in the city — but political insiders feared the storm could dump up to 8 inches on the district.
“As close as this race has been and after the millions of dollars that have been spent, the election might be decided by the weather gods,” said Lawrence Levy, dean of the National Center of Suburban Studies at Hofstra University and a longtime observer of Long Island politics.
Some said the storm could favor Suozzi, a former three-term congressman, as thousands more Democrats turned out during the nine days of early voting.
But the Nassau Republican Party has a better election day “get out the vote” operation, which ex-Sen. Al D’Amato said would help keep the weather from affecting turnout for Pilip, a Nassau County legislator.
“I don’t think the weather will have a big impact. We’ll have more people pulling voters out to the polls,” D’Amato told The Post, adding that conservatives angry at Washington will be more motivated to shovel out their cars to go vote for Pilip.
“Mazi is going to win,” he said. “Biden f--ked up. There’s a border crisis and people hate it.”
Both candidates have distanced themselves from Biden — but Pilip told Fox 5’s “Good Day New York” on Monday that Suozzi backed Biden policies in his 2021-2022 term.
“The migrant crisis we’re facing right now, the illegal immigration coming into our country — these are things [Suozzi] created,” Pilip said.
Suozzi, meanwhile, told Fox 5 he will work across the aisle, while Pilip is “taking the extreme right wing positions of the Republican Party and refuses to compromise.”