New York Odds and Ends

-On our New York poll we found pretty much the same stuff on public opinion about the mosque that everyone else has- only 32% of voters support building it to 55% opposed. But at the same time 59% of voters think the developer has the right to build it to only 30% who disagree on that front.

We took it a step further though and that's where the numbers get interesting. We asked, using the exact same verbiage as the mosque question, whether voters would support building a strip club two blocks from Ground Zero. The overall numbers came out roughly the same as for the mosque- 28% in support and 54% opposed. But a look inside the crosstabs finds a shocking disparity when it comes to who supports the mosque and who supports the strip club.

Just 4% of Republican voters support building the Ground Zero mosque. But 21% say they would support a Ground Zero strip club! Now everything that's happened at the RNC this year makes sense...just supporting the values of the base.

Democrats narrowly support the mosque but oppose the strip club, independents oppose both the mosque and the strip club.

-As David Paterson prepares to leave office we find that he and predecessor Eliot Spitzer are equally unpopular. Paterson's approval is 30/55 and Spitzer's favorability is an identical 30/55. The most interesting thing about Paterson's approval numbers is that he meets with roughly the same amount of favor from Democrats (30%), Republicans (27%), and independents (33%) alike. Paterson has to be the only Governor we've polled on this year who was more popular with independents than voters within his own party.

Spitzer's numbers break down in more predictable partisan fashion- 40% of Democrats like him but only 18% of Republicans do with independents in between at 24%.

Paterson and Spitzer may have equal numbers on a personal level but when it comes to who New Yorkers think the state would have been better served by over the last couple years it's no contest- voters say by a 45/28 margin that they wish Spitzer had been Governor since 2008. There's a bipartisan consensus on that- Democrats by a 31 point margin, independents by a 5 point margin, and Republicans by a 3 point margin think things would have been better if Spitzer had just stayed in office.

Full results here