Democrat Gillen opens double-digit lead over Republican DEsposito in contentious LI House race: poll

Freshman GOP Rep.Anthony D’Esposito is on the ropes in Nassau County, trailing Democratic rival Laura Gillen by 12 percentage points in New York’s swing 4th Congressional District, according to a new poll.The Newsday/Siena College survey released Tuesday found Gillen with the support of 53% of likely voters, while D’Esposito could only garner 41% backing in the race rated as a “toss-up” by the non-partisan Cook Political Report.In the 4th District’s presidential contest, Democrat Kamala Harris leads Republican Donald Trump by the same 12-point margin, 54%-42%.D’Esposito, who defeated Gillen in the same matchup two years ago by 3.6 percentage points, has been under fire since the New York Times reported last month that the former NYPD detective hired a purported mistress to work in his Garden City district office last year.D’Esposito campaign pollster John McLaughlin, whose own surveys have the Republican slightly ahead, disputed the poll’s findings.The Newsday/Siena survey has both Harris (66%) and Gillen (62%) winning Jewish voters by at least two-to-one over Trump and D’Esposito — both of whom received just 31% support from the demographic.McLaughlin argued that the survey, which was in the field Oct.

13-17, undercounted observant Jews by overlapping with the start of the Sukkot holiday.The GOP pollster also claimed Tuesday’s survey erred by under-sampling Jews, which McLaughlin has making up 20% of the NY-04 electorate compared to 13% in the Newsday/Siena survey.“They have Gillen winning Jewish voters 62%-31%,” McLaughlin said.“We had D’Esposito winning Jewish voters 57%-35%, because he was winning among Orthodox Jews 81%-4%.”McLaughlin also claimed that the poll undercounted self-declared conservatives, who made up 27% of the Newsday/Siena sample.

“Conservatives in their poll vote D’Esposito 88%-10%,” he said.“They underpolled conservatives by 9 points.”But Nassau County Democratic leader and state party chairman Ja...