The East Hampton Star: Fleming Now in Dead Heat in Poll

June 4, 2020 | By Christopher Walsh | Original Article

The campaign of Suffolk County Legislator Bridget Fleming, who is seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination to challenge Representative Lee Zeldin in New York’s First Congressional District in November, has released the results of a poll that put her in a statistical dead heat with Nancy Goroff.

The survey of 640 likely Democratic primary voters by the Honan Strategy Group, a Democratic polling, market research, and data analytics company, had Ms. Fleming at 28.89 percent to 28.83 percent for Ms. Goroff, who is on leave from her position as chairwoman of Stony Brook University’s chemistry department. Perry Gershon, an East Hampton resident who bested several candidates to win the Democratic nomination in 2018 before losing to Mr. Zeldin by four percentage points, was at 21.68 percent, according to the poll.

Another 20.59 percent of voters were undecided. Greg Fischer, another candidate, did not appear in the survey, which was conducted between last Thursday and Saturday, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.85 percent.

The Honan Strategy Group also analyzed polling data by those who had seen Ms. Fleming’s campaign communications. Among those voters, Ms. Fleming leads Ms. Goroff by 34 to 25 percent, with Mr. Gershon at just over 20 percent and another 20 percent undecided.

The survey found that Ms. Fleming, Ms. Goroff, and Mr. Gershon are about equally well known and perceived, with around 70 percent holding a favorable opinion of each. Mr. Gershon appeared to have the most recognition, but 23 percent of respondents had an unfavorable opinion of him. Sixteen percent had an unfavorable opinion of Ms. Goroff, versus 12 percent for Ms. Fleming.

The results contrast with an internal poll Mr. Gershon’s campaign released in February. In that survey of 500 likely Democratic voters conducted between Jan. 27 and Jan. 30, Mr. Gershon was comfortably ahead with 42 percent. Ms. Fleming was at 21 percent, and Ms. Goroff at 9 percent.

The Democratic primary election is on June 23.