ALBANY (AP) -- A new poll released Tuesday shows Democrat Andrew Cuomo is leading Republican Carl Paladino among likely voters as the race for New York governor enters its final month.
The Siena College poll shows Cuomo was favored by 56 percent of those polled, while Paladino received 32 percent support. In New York City, Cuomo led 70 percent to 17 percent, and he has a 54 percent to 35 percent lead in the city's suburbs. Cuomo also leads 45 percent to 43 percent upstate, where voters are considered most motivated and turnout is expected to be heavy.
The poll released Tuesday is the first since Paladino got into in a shouting match with a New York Post reporter. A video of that encounter got attention nationwide. The reporter was repeatedly pushing Paladino to provide proof of his suggestion that Cuomo had affairs when he was married, a claim Paladino later said he couldn't prove.
Paladino accused the Post of taking pictures of his 10-year-old daughter through the window of her home and following her, leaving the child distraught and crying for days. Col Allan, the editor of the Post, said the allegations were untrue.
Sixty-one percent of voters agreed that Paladino is, in the words of one of the poll's questions, a "loose cannon, who doesn't have the temperament to be governor."
Siena's Steven Greenberg said that with "four weeks until voters go to the polls, Cuomo remains in a very strong position to be elected New York's next governor."
Siena questioned 636 likely voters Sunday and Monday. The poll has a margin of error of 3.9 percentage points.
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