This is maybe the most surprising poll I’ve seen this election season:
Flame-throwing Republican Carl Paladino is within striking distance of overtaking longtime gubernatorial frontrunner Andrew Cuomo, a shocking new poll finds.
Among likely voters, the Democrat Cuomo has a paltry 49% to 43% lead over Paladino, the blowhard Buffalo businessman who won a shocking and decisive victory last week in the GOP primary, the Quinnipiac University poll finds.
Quinnipiac’s findings are in stark contrast to a Rasmussen Reports poll released Monday that showed Cuomo with a more robust 54% to 38% lead.
Cuomo “might be a victim of his own excess,” Quinnipiac pollster Maurice Carroll said. “Politicians and polls have depicted him so relentlessly as a sure thing that he might be a victim of the ‘throw the bums out’ attitude that hits incumbents in this angry year.”
Most interesting of all is that Paladino leads Cuomo not just among Republicans and self-identified tea-partiers, but among independents – 49 to 43 percent.
More here: