All Over Albany

Surprises in local state Senate races?

A couple of interesting things about two local state Senate races in the Siena poll out today:

Roy McDonald
Here's how respondents said they'd be voting in the state Senate 43rd election:
Kathy Marchione (R): 40%
Roy McDonald (I): 29%
Robin Andrews (D): 25%
(MOE +/- 4.4%)

Yep, Roy McDonald -- who stopped campaigning after narrowly losing the Republican primary -- polled ahead of the Democrat in the race, Robin Andrews. Two questions that occurred to us because of this result:

+ Could Roy McDonald have won the general election if he kept going?

+ And/or, is McDonald's relatively strong showing in the poll just an artifact of incumbency? Of all the candidates in the field, he's the one most likely to be known by voters. And 67% of respondents in the Siena poll said they didn't know about/didn't have an opinion of Robin Andrews.

State Senate 46th
The state Senate 46th district is new this year -- it covers large parts of Albany, Schenectady, Greene, Montgomery, and Ulster counties. It was created during the recent round of redistricting. And the conventional wisdom is that the district was drawn specifically for George Amedore, a Republican state Assemblyman from Rotterdam.

But, according to the Siena poll, Amedore leads Democrat Cecilia Tkaczyk just 47-44 (MOE +/- 4.6%).

Here's voter enrollment for the district, as of August 31 (rounded): Dem 34% | Rep 29% | Con 3% | Wor .5% | Ind 5.5% | Gre .3% | Unaffiliated 27%

Two Super PACs recently said they'd drop $500,000 in support of Tkaczyk -- Amedore had a big money lead prior to that. [NYT] [TU]