Malliotakis leads Rose by 6 points in N.Y. House rematch: Siena poll

Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, the Republican defending Staten Island’s House seat, leads former Rep. Max Rose by 6 percentage points, according to a Siena College survey published Thursday.

The race for New York’s 11th Congressional District, which also covers sections of southern Brooklyn, is the city’s most competitive House race this fall. Malliotakis and Rose are locked in a rematch after she beat the Democrat in 2020.

Rose’s campaign faces a heavy lift in the district, which former President Donald Trump won in 2020. But the poll could signal that Rose remains within striking distance, even as Malliotakis maintains her status as the clear front-runner.

“Six points can be closed in five weeks, but it can also grow in that same time,” Steven Greenberg, a Siena pollster, said in a statement.

The survey was conducted by phone during the last week of September and had a margin of error of 5.2 percentage points, Siena said.

In a statement, Malliotakis said the district’s voters “realize that skyrocketing inflation, high gas prices and out of control crime are due to the far left policies of Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi.”

“I will fight to reverse their damage while Max Rose will just help them make things worse,” Malliotakis added in the statement.

But Rose’s campaign manager, Carl Sanford, argued in a statement that the Democrat is “surging” and that voters are responding to a contrast between an “anti-abortion extremist” and a challenger “who will always stand up for a woman’s right to choose.”

Rose, a 35-year-old combat veteran, has attempted to drill Malliotakis’ anti-abortion record into voters’ minds after the Supreme Court erased the federal right to abortion in June. This week, an abortion-centered ad his campaign released briefly faced an age restriction from Twitter.

But it is not clear how effective the abortion line of attack will be against Malliotakis, a 41-year-old former assemblywoman, in a red-leaning district, and in a state that has its own robust reproductive protections.

The Siena survey found that 41% of voters in the district named the economy as their most important issue, 21% cited crime, 16% pointed to the health of democracy and 8% named abortion.

“Rose, and many Democrats, are concentrating on abortion as an argument. Obviously, it’s not working in the way he thought,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic strategist. “The sense is that things are out of control. Inflation, bread-and-butter issues are going to move Republicans where possible.”

In 2020, Malliotakis beat Rose by 6 percentage points in the district, cutting his time in Congress short after a single term.

Election Day this fall is Nov. 8.