The Albany Times Union, conceivably the most biased newspaper in the country, wants North Country New York voters to believe a Democrat is about to flip New York’s 21st Congressional District currently held by Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik.
Their evidence is a Siena Research Institute survey, released October 9, that has Democrat Blake Gendebien leading Republican Anthony Constantino 46 to 42, with independent Christopher Schmidt at 5 and 8 percent undecided. Read the ballot Siena actually tested, and the sample underneath it, and the lead dissolves. This is not a measurement of the election on November 3. It is a measurement of an election that will not be held. Schmidt is a write-in candidate not on the ballot!
The certified November ballot in NY-21 has two names: Anthony Constantino and Blake Gendebien. Schmidt failed to qualify for a line. A federal judge dismissed his challenge to the state’s signature requirement in August, and he is running as a write-in. Siena read his name to respondents anyway and parked 5 percent of the vote with him. There is another liberal write-in in the race who was not named. This is the second media poll of the contest to test a ballot that does not exist. A survey that invents a candidate, then treats his supporters as if they had somewhere to go on Election Day, is not polling the race. It is diluting it.
The Sienna Institute conduct of this poll is both unprofessional and methodologically flawed and they know it
The rest of the sample does not describe this district. Elise Stefanik, who carried NY-21 62 to 38 and whose favorable rating in district polling has run between 56 and 62, comes in at roughly 50 percent favorable in Siena’s numbers, 50–44 in the published release. Bruce Blakeman republican candidate for Governorleads Democrat incumbentKathy Hochul by 15 points. Hochul lost this district by 23 points in 2022, and every poll the Constantino campaign has taken here has Blakeman ahead by 20 or more. President Trump is at 52 percent unfavorable in a district he carried by double digits. A survey can be internally consistent and still be wrong about the place it claims to represent. When the anchors of the district — the outgoing congresswoman, the president, the top of the ticket — all come in softer than the election returns and the other available polling, the congressional horse race sitting on top of those numbers is not credible.
The refusals make it worse. In any serious poll, refusals are not folded into the result as if they were evenly distributed non-answers. Here, 10 percent of Republicans and 9 percent of independents refused to answer, against 2 percent of Democrats. That imbalance does not stay in a footnote. It changes the weighted distribution of the sample. Siena’s own crosstabs already show Gendebien consolidating Democrats at 85–10 while Constantino is held to 65–21 among Republicans. Strip out a phantom write-in and a lopsided refusal rate, and the four-point Democratic lead is a rounding error inside a margin of error of 4.6 points on 496 likely voters interviewed from September 30 to October 6.
Follow the money, which does not lie the way a ballot test can. If NY-21 were actually a four-point race a month out, national Democrats would be spending as if it were. They are not. Gendebien reported roughly $500,000 in the bank on October 1, a poor number this late, and a candidate who has lost cash on hand over the past year while carrying a heavy bill load. His campaign is on television and little else. Constantino’s side is taking the rest of the advertising and tying Gendebien to Hochul. On fundraising calls, Gendebien’s own callers have been telling donors he has been losing ground and is down in the campaign’s latest internal poll. Campaigns do not beg that way when their private numbers match the public ones.
Siena has been here before. Its October 2020 poll of the old NY-22, taken September 27 to October 4 among 383 likely voters, had Anthony Brindisi leading Claudia Tenney 48 to 39. It was the only public poll of the race. Tenney won. The institute’s statewide record is no better. A pollster that misses a congressional race by nine points in the same media market does not get the benefit of the doubt when it misses the ballot, the refusals, and the fundamentals in the district next door.
None of this means the race is over, or that Constantino can ignore turnout in a midterm. It means the survey the Albany and Plattsburgh press is treating as a snapshot of NY-21 does not describe the election voters will cast. Two names are on the ballot. The district still prefers Republicans for Congress, 50 to 45 even in this sample, and prefers the Republican for governor by 15. Anthony Constantino is winning the race that exists. Siena polled a different one.
