Mayoral Candidate Eric Adams Edges Out Yang for First Time in Public Poll

    Mayoral candidate Eric Adams took first place in a new poll, knocking Andrew Yang off as the city’s top pick, since he unexpectedly entered the New York City mayoral race in mid-January.

    Over three days last week, GQR, which is a Washington, DC-based polling and strategy firm, conducted the survey of 500 likely Democratic voters, in which Adams was the top pick for mayor for 21% of respondents, Politico reported.

   Yang came in second in the poll with 18% of respondents choosing him, and City Comptroller Scott Stringer followed with 15% of New Yorkers’ support.

   The other mayoral candidates, all of whom are more progressive than the more moderate Yang and Adams, failed to earn even 10% of New Yorkers’ support.

    Of those polled, 11% said they were still undecided, seven weeks before the June 22 primary that will likely decide who will replace Mayor Bill de Blasio.

   Until now, Brooklyn’s borough president has ranked a close second to Yang, although charter school organization Students First conducted another poll that recently found Adams to be slowly gaining on Yang, who has received the lion’s share of media coverage in the mayoral race of the past four months.

    Typically getting the second-highest amount of media attention thus far, Adams has yet to spend any of his $7.9 million campaign war chest on TV ads, which can be quite influential in the waning days of the race.

   While Adams, who served for 22 years in the NYPD from 1984 to 2006, has focused his campaign on tackling crime and enhancing public safety, Yang has tried to appeal to voters on a broad range of issues that appeal to many populations of the city.

   The GQR poll “shows what we have seen on the ground for months: that New Yorkers want Eric to be the next mayor because they share his vision for a safer, fairer city where prosperity is shared by all,”  said Evan Thies, who is a spokesperson for Adams.

   “Every other poll has us in first place, but we’ve always said this would be a close race,” Yang co-campaign manager Chris Coffey said. “The only poll that really matters is the one on June 22, and we expect to win that one.”