BY: Rockland Post Desk
A new polling memo obtained exclusively by the Rockland Post shows progressive Democrat Peter Chatzky surging amongst Democrat primary voters in the race to take on Republican Rep. Mike Lawler.
The key takeaways from the poll, according to the memo:
- A significant share of Democrat voters remain undecided, revealing the wide-open nature of this race. 70% of likely Democrat primary voters are undecided, and no candidate received more than 9% of voters.
- When the ballot is slimmed to Peter Chatzky, Beth Davidson, and Cait Conley with biographies attached to candidates, progressive Peter Chatzky is the front-runner, jumping to 27% on the ballot, while undecideds drop to 42%.
- The data also shows that New York City’s progressive mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani, is viewed positively among Democratic primary voters, with his image at 60% favorable, highlighting the importance of his agenda and coalition to a primary victory in NY-17.
The massive growth in support for Peter Chatzky after biographies are introduced show that voters more closely align themselves with the far-left, Mamdani-wing of the party. This stands in contrast to national Democrats’ preferred candidates in the race, Beth Davidson and Cait Conley, who were the only candidates in the race invited to Washington last month for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s Candidate Week.
Whichever Democrat emerges from the primary will face Rep. Lawler, who has raised $3.9M this cycle so far, and who bucked the top of the ticket last November, winning reelection in a district Kamala Harris carried.
The survey was conducted November 19-2, 2025, among 378 likely Democratic primary voters in New York’s 17th Congressional District.
Sources say that this poll shows that not all New Yorkers are aligned with this. It’s just 378 Democratic voters out of 222,813 registered Democrats. Again, this is the extreme crazy part of the party taking over and he is not the pick of the Democrats.