Political Whisperer Archives

Yes, You Can Believe the Polls… Mostly

BQE Admin on October 16, 2025

Political Whisperer

By Robert Hornak

Robert Hornak is a veteran political consultant who has previously served as the Deputy Director of the Republican Assembly Leader’s NYC office and as Executive Director of the Queens Republican Party. He can be reached at rahornak@gmail. com and @roberthornak on X.

When you talk about election polls you hear many different responses. What many Republicans have been saying lately when it comes to the polls for the NYC mayors’ race is that they don’t believe the polls. And that’s a shame.

Polling is not intended to definitively predict the winner of an election, especially months before an election. What polls offer is a snapshot of what the electorate is thinking at that moment in time and insight into what each candidate needs to do to increase their voter appeal.

Candidates can look at these polls and find their strengths and weaknesses, then go about emphasizing their strengths while minimizing or adjusting for their weaknesses. That’s what campaigns are all about.

When this is explained, many people will push back, saying, well what about Trump? Well, if you look at the Trump polls, they were very interesting. In 2016, Trump was trailing Clinton the entire race. But as the election took shape, a phrase was coined in response to what the polls were showing. Voters related to Trump but were not saying they would vote for him. These were increasingly referred to as the hidden Trump voter.

And in the end, while Trump won the electoral college, he did lose the popular vote as the polls predicted.

The 2020 election is now the third rail of politics, but the polls showed Trump down and he ended up losing. And in 2024, Harris was up at the very beginning, but as she stumbled while responding to serious questions, the polls narrowed and Trump took the lead in many national polls and almost every swing state poll.

But for mayoral polling you can look no further than the 2021 election. The first polls that came out after Eric Adams won the primary showed Sliwa with under 30% of voter support. That was where he stayed the entire race, and that was where he finished on election day.

In the Democratic Primary this year, Cuomo was up early and expected to easily win. But that wasn’t where the polls stayed. As each month passed, Mamdani closed the gap, leading to many people questioning Cuomo’s strategy and commitment. As the election drew near the polls were showing a tight race, with two polls actually showing Mamdani pulling ahead.

Now, the polls have all consistently shown Mamdani leading in the 40’s. with Cuomo until recently in the 20’s, and Sliwa in the low teens. That has not changed significantly all through the summer and in the Quinnipiac poll after Adams dropped out, and it showed all his support going to Cuomo, propelling him up to 33% and just over ten points behind Mamdani.

This has clearly become a two- person race, but not between the two people that Sliwa supporters claim it’s between.

Sliwa’s campaign strategy has not changed since June, and neither have his poll numbers. In fact, he’s essentially running the same campaign he did in 2021 that got him 28% of the vote. Disappointed Republicans have gone to Cuomo in large numbers (many by way of Adams), leaving him with approximately half the support he had last time.

The polls have accurately laid out each candidate’s strengths and weaknesses by issue. Mamdani was very strong on a number of issues, like affordability. Cuomo was very strong on a number, like experience. Sliwa has not shown strong on a single issue, even on his signature issue public safety, where voter confidence for him is still weak.

Yes, the polls can be off. It requires an ability to accurately predict who will turn out to vote and asking the right questions from a scientifically random sample of voters. Campaign strategists are required to and often do it well.

The idea that they will be off, and consistently, by 30 points or more is silly to believe. This campaign has always been a race to 40% and Mamdani is in the catbird seat. Cuomo needs to win over Mamdani supporters to have a chance to beat him and be the one who finishes over 40%.

Political Whisperer: New York’s Threat to Re-Redraw Congressional Lines

BQE Admin on August 12, 2025

By Robert Hornak

One of the great traditions of American politics is for both political parties to try their best to gerrymander the lines of the political districts in their states. There is nothing new about this or unique to either party.

There has been recent attention brought to this process, sparked by two recent Supreme Court decisions. In 2019, the court ruled that issues related to partisan gerrymandering – the process where district lines are drawn to favor one party over the other – are “beyond the reach of the federal courts” changing how past voting rights cases, that advantaged democrats over republicans, would be considered by the court.

Then in 2024, the SCOTUS ruled in favor of a South Carolina district that was challenged as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Writing for the majority, Justice Alito stated, “inferring bad faith based on the racial effects of a political gerrymander in a jurisdiction in which race and partisan preference are very closely correlated” would no longer be accepted as a basis for challenge by the court, recognizing the difference between political and racial gerrymandering.

Now there is talk about drawing new lines in certain red states where partisan gerrymandering in the past had been thwarted by the courts as being racially, not politically based. Texas is leading the charge, looking to redraw their congressional lines to increase partisan advantage, as democrats have already done in many states, looking to fight fire with fire.

Democrats, naturally, are up in arms, screaming about how unethical this effort is, while trying to cover their Cheshire cat grin for having done it themselves so successfully in states like Illinois, California, and Massachusetts.

But nowhere were they more blatant about this than in New York. In 2014, NY voters approved a referendum to make the redistricting process “a fair and readily transparent process by which to redraw the lines of state legislative and congressional districts” according to the NYC Independent Redistricting Commission. The newly created IRC would draw the lines of new districts with strict constitutional limitations on gerrymandering to advantage either political party. However, the legislature must approve the final maps, a legislature now dominated by democrats.

Unlike Texas, the NY Constitution mandates that district lines be redrawn once and only once a decade. The IRC submitted their constitutionally required plan for redistricting for the 2022 elections, but they were not gerrymandered enough for the Democrats in Albany.

Unable to get the 2/3 vote required to pass their own gerrymandered lines, the process was handed to the courts. A non-partisan expert was engaged and the court set the new lines. Lines that were generally seen as fair by just about everyone – except the Democrats in power who were highly displeased that Republicans gained three seats that election.

So, committed to finding a better way to gerrymander within constitutional boundaries, Democrats pledged to draw new lines for the 2024 election. And they did. Republicans, who had 11 seats after the 2022 election but lost one in the special election to replace George Santos, went from 10 seats to 7 after 2024.

So now Texas is effectively doing what NY did just a year ago. But not to be outdone, NY Democrats are declaring themselves the masters of gerrymandering and telling Texas Republicans you ain’t seen nothing yet.

While Democrats around the country yell foul and claim that Texas is violating the constitution (although without challenging Texas’ authority in court and with Texas creating three new majority Hispanic districts), NY Democrats are threatening action and pledging to once again redraw NY’s lines and gerrymander them even more with the explicit goal of eliminating five more NY Republicans.

Democratic Senate Deputy Majority Leader Michael Gianaris said very bluntly, “We can come up with lines that comply with constitutional criteria that still accomplish our goal” just as they did in 2024. Only one thing stands in their way, the NYS Constitution. They need to change the state constitution to allow mid-decade redistricting. All this depends on a positive outcome for their referendum in a future election with an electorate that has already expressed their disapproval of partisan gerrymandering.

Political Whisperer: Mamdani Derangement Gripping NYC is Justified

BQE Admin on July 14, 2025

By Robert Hornak

It’s official, Zohran Mamdani’s primary win is unnerving many in NYC and dividing Democrats into two very distinct camps.

First are the Mamdani defenders. With Mamdani derangement syndrome appearing to overtake a majority of New Yorkers there is a sudden onslaught of opinion columns and social media posts aimed at trying to calm everyone down.

They are spinning the story that Mamdani isn’t so bad. Sure, he’s said some negative things about Israel, but that’s just politics they claim. When confronted on his belief system he responded saying that he is opposed to hate crimes and would allocate additional funds to fighting them. Of course, that’s not a denial but it was enough for many of his defenders to hang their hat on.

They are also claiming that all his proposals for free stuff are nothing new, they have either been done before or they’ve been campaigned on before but not enacted. While intended to be a ringing endorsement of the Mamdani agenda, claiming to be just more of the same failed policies that have brought NYC closer to the bad old days, and making this the city of exodus, driving out more people in search of a better life than anywhere else in the country, doesn’t seem like the best sales technique, but again, they need to say something to make him seem acceptable.

De Blasio enacted three rent freezes in eight years, and that worked out so well we saw rents hit all-time highs. So why not double down and push for a four year freeze? That should make things even better. Free buses? Well we already have discounts for certain riders, that’s the same as free for everyone, isn’t it?

Tax the rich? Well, that’s surely not a new one. But that is controlled by Albany, as even a new member of the Assembly should know. And, of course, that is the Democratic Party mantra, and they have successfully complicated the tax code to try to get more and more from the successful, with no amount ever seeming to be enough.

That leads to the argument that Mamdani may not fully align with traditional socialists, but rather adopts the label strategically. While he has made statements suggesting support for public control over certain industries—an idea rooted in socialist and even communist frameworks—that alone doesn’t necessarily make him a communist.

It’s easy to see how his rhetoric may come across as appealing or idealistic. But his critics argue that when a politician shares their worldview, it’s worth taking them at their word.

Concerns have also been raised about his positions on Israel. Critics point to his support for the BDS movement, which many believe unfairly singles out Israel. These decisions have drawn serious criticism and prompted questions about his broader worldview.

Proposals like free bus service, universal childcare, and rent freezes may not amount to full-fledged socialism, but critics argue they reflect a lack of fiscal planning and a limited roadmap for how to realistically move New York City forward. The cost of these initiatives remains largely unanswered, leaving doubts about their sustainability.

Then there’s the fact that Mamdani continues to embrace the label of “socialist,” and has publicly expressed views critical of extreme wealth, private property, and market capitalism. These ideas, while resonant with some progressive voters, are viewed by others as impractical or even concerning.

Some argue that dismissing Mamdani as merely holding controversial views on Israel or as a moderate progressive downplays the impacts of his rhetoric and policy positions. They believe his track record speaks for itself.

But he does have a warm smile and projects a youthful exuberance that many voters find attractive and they will ignore all the warning signs of the coming disaster for promises of free stuff delivered with a warm, engaging smile. Whether the enthusiasm is enough to outweigh skepticism about his policies remains to be seen.

Robert Hornak is a professional political consultant who has previously served as the Deputy Director of the Republican Assembly Leader’s NYC office and as Executive Director of the Queens Republican Party. He can be reached at rahornak@gmail.com and @roberthornak on X.

Did Hell Just Freeze Over in New York City?

BQE Admin on July 2, 2025

Politcal Whisperer

By Robert Hornak

What everyone thought was unthinkable happened last Tuesday, a 33-year old self-proclaimed socialist with a resume thinner than tissue paper won the nomination for Mayor of the City of New York.

By all accounts, the perceived front runner, former governor Andrew Cuomo, ran a lackluster, uninspired campaign that he could have phoned in. In contrast, Mamdani ran a campaign that was vibrant and engaging, with a youthful, attractive candidate who managed to connect with many voters. He stood out, in many ways, from the rest of the pack.

Cuomo had all the establishment support. The Democratic County organizations, the big, powerful unions, and the business and real estate communities. It seemed unthinkable that Democrats could lose this election to a back-bench Assemblyman with no real world experience. But that’s exactly what happened.

Now, everyone who thinks this could be an existential threat to the future of the city is in a state of total panic.

The conventional wisdom – yes the same wisdom that thought Cuomo was an easy winner – says that the field must be cleared now, and rally around one candidate to take on Mamdani head to head.

The problem with that is obvious. Why should anyone trust the pick of the conventional thinkers after they got the primary so incredibly wrong?

Some Republicans think that their nominee, Curtis Sliwa, should be the one. But many more people seem to think that failed and disgraced incumbent mayor Eric Adams is the pick to get behind. Cuomo is also still running as an independent, just like Adams, but is seen as a loser now after his poor primary performance.

After the first round of voting, Mamdani was at 43.5% with 432,000 votes. Cuomo was a distant second at 36.4% with 361,000 votes. That’s extremely embarrassing for someone once elected to serve as governor three times. Most of the Cuomo primary support seems to be jumping to Adams, with the County organizations still undecided on how to deal with such a perilous nominee.

It seems clear the better way to go, as Republicans often say, is through competition. Eight candidates are on the ballot for mayor. And six appear to be real, including Mamdani, Cuomo, Adams, Sliwa, and two other independent candidates, powerful lawyer Jim Walden, a democrat, and successful biotech entrepreneur Joseph Hernandez, a republican.

Nobody is dropping out now. That’s clear, no matter how much handwringing is done by the conventional thinkers who believe they know the best way to win again. So, let’s watch this race progress over the next four months, which is plenty of time for the other five candidates to make their case to the voters. Let’s see who resonates, who connects with the voters, who can either overcome all their negative baggage or make an incredible first impression as an exciting, new face to convince the voters they are the best one to run the city.

Then, come mid-October, we will see who’s in the best position to win and rally everyone around that one candidate to beat Mamdani.

That’s the only way to beat someone with charisma and over 430,000 votes at the start to count on. It’s no guarantee to work, but much better than having one choice shoved down our throats now that nobody can agree on.

And, of course, we always have the ‘break glass in case of emergency’ option. This will add a new and looming dimension to the governor’s race next year. Whoever is governor, should Mamdani win, will have the power to remove him, as we learned after the Adams indictment.

Should Mamdani do any of the things he has pledged, allow criminals to run free, impede federal authorities arresting illegal immigrants, or creating an international incident trying to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in deference to what he refers to as “internation law,” he can be removed from office.

In what could be a competitive race for governor, a Mamdani mayoralty could be what tilts the scale for the first Republican governor since 2002.

Robert Hornak is a professional political consultant who has previously served as the Deputy Director of the Republican Assembly Leader’s NYC office and as Executive Director of the Queens Republican Party. He can be reached at rahornak@gmail.com and @roberthornak on X.

The Nuclear Power Revolution Reaches New York

BQE Admin on July 2, 2025

Politcal Whisperer

By Robert Hornak

You know an important election is approaching when elected representatives abandon the long-standing political ideology of their party and actually take actions that many people consider long overdue.

That very thing just happened. Gov. Kathy Hochul, despite generally strong opposition from democrats, just announced that she has directed The New York Power Authority, the utility owned by the state, to build a new nuclear reactor in upstate NY. This new facility will provide approximately half the energy that the 2.0 GW Indian Point facility provided before it was closed.

The closing of Indian Point is considered by most people to be the perfect storm of policy failure. It was ordered by the Cuomo-Hochul administration with no plan to make up for the loss of 25% of the supply being provided by Indian Point to NYC. The fallout was the loss of 1,000 good-paying jobs at the facility and economic activity at surrounding local businesses.

Ultimately, three new natural gas fired power plants were built that replaced 1.8 GW of the energy lost. Nevertheless, energy costs in NY have been skyrocketing as demand grows. Rolling blackouts have become a constant summer concern as we just witnessed in south Queens where 300,000 homes lost power during a summer heatwave.

Meanwhile, other states have embraced the new nuclear revolution and the new technologies that have been created in recent decades that are far superior to the tech used when most of our current nuclear facilities were built over 50 years ago. Just as we’ve witnessed with the space program, nobody is looking to use the old 1950’s tech that Indian Point was created with.

Hochul made sure to drive that point home in her announcement, proclaiming, “This is not your grandparents’ nuclear reactor. You’re not going to see this in a movie starring Jane Fonda,” in a reference to Fonda’s 1970’s movie The China Syndrome that nearly killed the nuclear power industry by fantastically fictionalizing the worst case scenario of a nuclear reactor meltdown. This was in spite of the reality that we never had a nuclear plant failure or a single death associated with nuclear energy in the U.S.

In recent years many states have realized the insanity of denying the potential of nuclear power to meet future energy needs and have overturned bans on new nuclear plants. Texas, struggling with its recent self-inflicted energy shortfall from a reliance on new, unreliable wind and solar plants, has just approved a $350 million fund to build new nuclear plants.

Some of our largest tech companies, including Amazon and Google, who have incredible energy needs to power server farms have also begun investing in nuclear energy to power their operations.

And, of course, there were the recent Executive Orders signed by President Trump to speed up the process for the Nuclear Regulatory Agency to approve new permits and generally make building new nuclear reactors much faster.

All this is welcome news to most New Yorkers who have been hit with massive electricity bills in recent years that are making living in NY unaffordable for many people. Crushingly high energy bills are just one more reason that there has been an exodus of people from New York to lower cost of living, low tax states like Florida.

But while welcome news, this just scratches the surface of the problem and the need. Many areas upstate are anxious to be the site for this new plant and the many good paying jobs and economic activity it will bring. Unemployment upstate has been abysmal and the exodus out of NY has hit upstate the hardest.

This, however, should be a first step to making NY a leader in building a nuclear powered future. Communities all across upstate would be thrilled to get a reactor that would revive their local economy while providing desperately needed, reliable and affordable energy for downstate.

This would be a win-win for everyone. Will Hochul embrace this long overdue win for New Yorkers and build on it or will this just be a one-time election season stunt? Maybe the pressure of reelection will make this more than just a gimmick. Time will tell.

Robert Hornak is a professional political consultant who has previously served as the Deputy Director of the Republican Assembly Leader’s NYC office and as Executive Director of the Queens Republican Party. He can be reached at rahornak@gmail.com and @roberthornak on X.

Mamdani Wants to be NYC’s Candyman not Mayor

BQE Admin on June 13, 2025

by Robert Hornak

It’s very fitting that Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year old assemblyman born in Uganda, is the child of a famous Hollywood director. He appears to be auditioning for the lead in a theoretical remake famous movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory rather than running for mayor of the biggest city in America.

Mamdani, a self-proclaimed “Democratic Socialist” has staked his candidacy on a laundry list of giveaways, essentially candy that he plans to give the people of NYC in exchange for their vote, candy that he could only make appear with the magic of Hollywood.

With the Democratic Primary less than two weeks away, Mamdani’s message has remained consistent. He plans to give away all of the following:

Free buses
Free childcare
City-owned grocery stores selling food at wholesale prices
Create a Department of Community Safety to “prevent violence before it happens.”
A freeze in rent while working to bring rents down
Build 200,000 new affordable, stabilized rental units
Plus, a crackdown on “bad” landlords.

He claims to know “exactly how to pay for it, too.” His brainstorm of original thinking is to, ready for it – raise taxes on corporations and the rich. Oh, and increase fine collection on landlords, the same people he plans to ask to build new housing that they won’t make any money from.

This agenda is only realistic in the make believe world of a Hollywood movie. Mamdani doesn’t have control over almost his entire agenda. He might as well be advocating for space exploration and Middle East peace. But I guess he plans to make developers, landlords, grocery store owners, corporations and high income individuals an offer they can’t refuse?

But all these ideas can be refused and have been in the past. This is not the first time these ideas have been proposed. The buses are run by the MTA, a state agency. The mayor has no direct control over them or what the fare is. He could propose a NYC takeover of New York City Transit, the division of the MTA that runs city buses and subways. But then the mayor will be fully accountable for its performance. Not a bad idea, but that’s not what he is proposing.

His free childcare proposal is to provide “free childcare for every New Yorker aged 6 weeks to 5 years” while lamenting that some women choose to stay home and raise their children rather than remain a taxpaying working in NYC’s infrastructure, while turning the raising of their children over to another worker who Mamdani pledges will be paid equivalent to NYC school teachers. And likely part of the union as well, expanding union leaders’ power and control over a long-broken educational system that, by the way, he has no plans to fix.

This same dissection can be done for every one of his proposals. City-owned grocery stores will put the thousands of existing grocery stores, convenience stores and bodegas out of business. Putting tens of thousands of workers out of work, from clerks to managers to owners.

Asking developers and landlords to build 200,000 new rental units that will be “affordable” while freezing the rent those same landlords can charge on existing units and aggressively fining them for every minor violation is not compatible. If developers can’t make money, they just won’t build rentals. It’s that simple. They are many other ways to increase supply to meet demand and try to stabilize the cost. Let’s also not forget the worst landlord in NYC is the city itself, with the worst conditions in public housing. But he has no plan to fix that either.

Creating a Dept of Community Safety is just code for defund the police. No matter how candy-coated you make that proposal sound, that’s all it is. We have real public safety issues to address, but he has no plan for that either.

And, of course, pay for it all by raising taxes. After they just finished telling us that tariffs are nothing more than a tax on business that raises the cost to consumers, Mamdani is proposing to raise the cost of goods and services on every New Yorker for everything they buy.

The role Mamdani is really suited for is the Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He wants to entice us with his promise of sweets in a tempting ploy to trick us into an actual reality that traps everyone.

Yes, You Can Believe the Polls… Mostly