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    Four Takeaways From Biden’s Post-Debate Interview

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    He downplayed. He denied. He dismissed.President Biden’s first television interview since his poor debate performance last week was billed as a prime-time opportunity to reassure the American people that he still has what it takes to run for, win and hold the nation’s highest office.But Mr. Biden, with more than a hint of hoarseness in his voice, spent much of the 22 minutes resisting a range of questions that George Stephanopoulos of ABC News had posed — about his competence, about taking a cognitive test, about his standing in the polls.The president on Friday did not struggle to complete his thoughts the way he did at the debate. But at the same time he was not the smooth-talking senator of his youth, or even the same elder statesman whom the party entrusted four years ago to defeat former President Donald J. Trump.Instead, it was a high-stakes interview with an 81-year-old president whose own party is increasingly doubting him yet who sounded little like a man with any doubts about himself.Here are four takeaways:Biden downplays the debate as a one-time flub.The interview was Mr. Biden’s longest unscripted appearance in public since his faltering debate performance. The delay has had his allies on Capitol Hill and beyond confused about what was keeping the president cloistered behind closed doors — or depending upon teleprompters — for so long.The eight-day lag has seen the first members of Congress call for him to step aside and donors demand that the party consider switching candidates. It also heightened the scrutiny of every word Mr. Biden said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      For Democrats Pining for an Alternative, Biden Team Has a Message: Get Over It

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      When it comes down to it, a lot of Democrats wish President Biden were not running this fall. Only 28 percent of Democrats in a new survey by The New York Times and Siena College expressed enthusiasm about his candidacy and 38 percent said flatly that Mr. Biden should not be their nominee.But even as many Democrats both in Washington and around the country quietly pine for someone else to take on former President Donald J. Trump, who leads nationwide in the poll by 5 percentage points, no one who matters seems willing to tell that to Mr. Biden himself. Or if they are, he does not appear to be listening.Surrounded by a loyal and devoted inner circle, Mr. Biden has given no indication that he would consider stepping aside to let someone else lead the party. Indeed, he and the people close to him bristle at the notion. For all the hand-wringing, the president’s advisers note, no serious challenge has emerged and Mr. Biden has dominated the early Democratic primaries even more decisively than Mr. Trump has won his own party’s nominating contests.The Biden team views the very question as absurd. The president in their view has an impressive record of accomplishment to run on. There is no obvious alternative. It is far too late in the cycle to bow out without considerable disruption. If he were ever to have opted against a second term, it would have been a year ago when there would have been time for a successor to emerge. And other than someone with Biden in their name, it is hard to imagine who would have enough influence to even broach the idea with him, much less sway him.“There is no council of elders and I’m not sure if there was that an incumbent president, no matter who it was, would listen to them,” said David Plouffe, the architect of President Barack Obama’s campaigns and one of the strategists who helped him pick Mr. Biden as his vice-presidential running mate in 2008. “He thinks, ‘Hey, I won and I beat the guy who’s going to run against me and I can do it again.’”Members of Mr. Biden’s team insist they feel little sense of concern. The president’s closest aides push back in exasperation against those questioning his decision to run again and dismiss polls as meaningless this far before the vote. They argue that doubters constantly underestimate Mr. Biden and that Democrats have won or outperformed expectations in 2018, 2020, 2022, 2023 and even a special House election this year.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Times/Siena College Polls: Methodology and How We Conducted Them

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      The Times/Siena College battleground polls released on Sunday and Monday were conducted over the past week in six swing states that are likely to decide the election: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Five of the states were won by Donald J. Trump in 2016 and then flipped by Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020. Nevada, which has always been a close state, came down to less than one percentage point in the 2022 U.S. Senate election.These states also contain some of the coalitions that will be crucial next fall: younger, more diverse voters in states like Arizona, Georgia and Nevada; and white working-class voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin who helped swing the election to Trump in 2016, and were central to Mr. Biden’s 2020 victory. They also provide some geographic diversity.We interviewed 600 respondents in each state to ensure we had a large enough sample to speak to specific subgroups of voters within these states, including age, race and ethnicity, income, education level, and party affiliation. Taken together, these 3,600 respondents represent our largest sample size of swing state voters to date. This also includes more than 700 undecided voters, a group that will be even more consequential within these crucial states.This is not the first time we have focused on swing states this early in an election cycle. In 2019, the poll explored a similar set of states, reflecting the battleground at the time. The political moment was slightly different, with Democrats in the thick of a nominating contest that split the party between liberals like Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and a moderate in Mr. Biden — and Mr. Trump was the incumbent president to beat.However, the goals of that poll were similar to this one. As Americans in key states across the political spectrum weigh their options, these polls shed light on the issues driving the election and voters’ appetites for the leading candidates. More

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      A Majority of Americans Support Trump Indictments, Polls Show

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      Recent polls conducted before the Georgia indictment showed that most believed that the prosecutions of the former president were warranted.Former President Donald J. Trump’s blistering attacks on prosecutors and the federal government over the cascade of indictments he faces do not appear to be resonating much with voters in the latest polls, yet his grip on Republicans is further tightening.A majority of Americans, in four recent polls, said Mr. Trump’s criminal cases were warranted. Most were surveyed before a grand jury in Georgia indicted him over his attempts to subvert the 2020 election, but after the federal indictment related to Jan. 6.At the same time, Mr. Trump still holds a dominant lead over the crowded field of Republicans who are challenging him for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination, including Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who continues to slide.The polls — conducted by Quinnipiac University, The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, ABC News/Ipsos and Fox News — showed that Americans remain divided along party lines over the dozens of criminal charges facing Mr. Trump.The takeaways aligned with the findings of a New York Times/Siena College poll last month, in which 22 percent of voters who believed that Mr. Trump had committed serious federal crimes said they still planned to support him in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup with Mr. DeSantis.Here are key findings from the recent polling:Most say a felony conviction should be disqualifying.In the Quinnipiac poll, 54 percent of registered voters said Mr. Trump should be prosecuted for trying to overturn the 2020 election. And seven out of 10 voters said that anyone convicted of a felony should no longer be eligible to be president.Half of Americans, but only 20 percent of Republicans, said that Mr. Trump should suspend his presidential campaign, according to the ABC News/Ipsos poll. This poll, which surveyed American adults, was the only one of the four surveys conducted entirely after Mr. Trump’s indictment in Georgia.When specifically asked by ABC about the Georgia case, 63 percent said the latest criminal charges against Mr. Trump were “serious.”Republicans, by and large, haven’t wavered.The trends were mixed for Mr. Trump, who is a voracious consumer of polls and often mentions them on social media and during campaign speeches. He has continually argued that the indictments were politically motivated and intended to short-circuit his candidacy.In a hypothetical rematch of the 2020 election, Mr. Trump trailed President Biden by a single percentage point in the latest Quinnipiac poll, 47 to 46 percent. Mr. Biden’s advantage was 5 percentage points in July.At his campaign rallies, Mr. Trump has frequently boasted how the indictments have been a boon for his polling numbers — and that rang true when Republicans were surveyed about the primary race.In those polls that tracked the G.O.P. nominating contest, Mr. Trump widened his lead over his challengers, beating them by nearly 40 points. His nearest competitor, Mr. DeSantis, had fallen below 20 percent in both the Fox and Quinnipiac polls.Mr. DeSantis, who earlier this month replaced his campaign manager as he shifts his strategy, dropped by 6 to 7 percentage points in recent months in both polls.Trump participated in criminal conduct, Americans say.About half of Americans said that Mr. Trump’s interference in the election in Georgia was illegal, according to the AP/NORC poll.A similar share of Americans felt the same way after Mr. Trump’s indictments in the classified documents and the Jan. 6 cases, but the percentage was much lower when he was charged in New York in a case related to a hush-money payment to a porn star.Fewer than one in five Republicans said that Mr. Trump had committed a crime in Georgia or that he broke any laws in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.When asked by Fox News whether Mr. Trump had engaged in illegal activity to overturn the 2020 election, 53 percent of registered voters said yes.But just 13 percent of Republicans shared that view.A plurality of those surveyed by ABC (49 percent) believed that Mr. Trump should be charged with a crime in Georgia.Support for the Justice Department’s charges.Fifty-three percent of U.S. adults said that they approved of the Justice Department’s decision to bring charges against Mr. Trump for his attempts to reverse his electoral defeat in 2020, The A.P. found.At the same time, the public’s confidence in the Justice Department registered at 17 percent in the same poll. More

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      Siena Poll Shows Zeldin Gaining on Hochul in NY Governor’s Race

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      Representative Lee Zeldin has cut into Gov. Kathy Hochul’s lead in the race for governor of New York, narrowing the margin to 11 percentage points, down from 17 points last month, according to a Siena College poll released on Tuesday.The survey suggested that Ms. Hochul, a Democrat, still possesses a healthy lead over Mr. Zeldin, a Republican, in a liberal-leaning state where no Republican has won a statewide race since 2002.But with Election Day just three weeks away, the diminished gap between the two suggested that New York voters were growing more concerned about the state’s direction — much as recent polling nationwide has indicated that the flailing economy and stubborn inflation remain top-of-mind concerns, as Republicans have expanded their edge over Democrats ahead of November’s midterm elections.While 61 percent of Democrats said that New York was on the right track, 87 percent of Republicans and a majority of independent voters said the state was headed in the wrong direction, according to the poll.In particular, Ms. Hochul lost support among white voters, who appear to be evenly divided between the candidates after favoring Ms. Hochul by 10 percentage points in September, the poll found.The results from the Siena poll tracked closely with a separate survey from Marist College last week that showed Ms. Hochul leading Mr. Zeldin by 10 percentage points among registered voters and eight percentage points among likely voters. Ms. Hochul appears to have a roughly 12-point lead, according to an average of nearly a dozen polls compiled by FiveThirtyEight, an opinion poll analysis website that takes into account a poll’s quality and partisan lean.Ms. Hochul and Mr. Zeldin have both sharpened their attacks in the final stretch, casting each other as members of their party’s most extreme wings and doubling down on the overarching themes that have defined the race. Ms. Hochul has continued to portray Mr. Zeldin as a threat to the state’s strict abortion protections, while Mr. Zeldin has blamed the governor’s policies for contributing to crime and rising costs in New York.The contest received a jolt over the weekend when former President Donald J. Trump formally endorsed Mr. Zeldin, who was one of Mr. Trump’s earliest supporters in Congress. Mr. Trump, who previously raised money for Mr. Zeldin, praised the candidate as “great and brilliant” in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social.Democrats in New York, where Mr. Trump remains deeply unpopular, quickly moved to capitalize on the endorsement, releasing an ad trumpeting Mr. Zeldin’s close ties to the former president, including his vote against certifying the 2020 election.But the congressman, who is vying to make inroads among moderate voters and disaffected Democrats, played down Mr. Trump’s formal backing, saying on Monday that it “shouldn’t have been news.”The Siena poll, which surveyed over 700 likely voters last week and has a margin of error of 4.9 percentage points, showed Ms. Hochul and Mr. Zeldin with a tight hold over voters from their respective parties. Mr. Zeldin, however, increased his lead among independent voters by six percentage points (49 percent to 40 percent over Ms. Hochul).The governor continues to have a commanding lead in New York City, where she is beating Mr. Zeldin 70 percent to 23 percent, and among women as well as Black and Latino voters, according to the poll.Mr. Zeldin, for his part, gained the lead in the city’s suburbs, where he is now beating Ms. Hochul 49 percent to 45 percent, after trailing her by one percentage point last month. He also increased his margin in upstate New York to four percentage points, up from one percentage point in the last poll. He has improved his name recognition, even if most voters continue to have an unfavorable view of him.Despite the modest gains, Mr. Zeldin would have to make much larger inroads across the map to cobble together a winning coalition. The state’s electoral landscape is stacked against him: Democratic voters outnumber Republicans two to one in New York.And though Mr. Zeldin is receiving significant support from Republican-backed super PACs pumping money into the race, he appears unlikely to surpass Ms. Hochul’s sizable fund-raising advantage.The governor has maintained an aggressive fund-raising schedule to help bankroll the multimillion-dollar barrage of television ads she has deployed to attack Mr. Zeldin.But Ms. Hochul, until very recently, has mostly avoided overtly political events such as rallies and other retail politics in which she personally engages with voters. Mr. Zeldin, in contrast, has deployed an ambitious ground game, touring the state in a truck festooned with his name and a “Save our State” slogan. More

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      Gov. Hochul Solidifies Lead Over Lee Zeldin in Latest Poll

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      Gov. Kathy Hochul has expanded her commanding lead over Representative Lee Zeldin, her Republican challenger in the New York race for governor, according to a Siena College poll released on Wednesday that showed her leading by 17 percentage points.The poll suggested that Ms. Hochul, a Democrat from Buffalo vying for her first full term, has improved her standing among voters since a Siena College survey in August that had her up by 14 points.With six weeks until Election Day, Ms. Hochul has held a comfortable lead in most public polls, buoyed by a seemingly insurmountable fund-raising edge that has allowed her to spend freely on television ads attacking Mr. Zeldin over the past few weeks.The poll was but the latest indication of the uphill battle that Mr. Zeldin faces to capture the governor’s office in New York, where Democratic voters outnumber Republicans two to one. The state hasn’t elected a Republican governor since George E. Pataki, who left office in 2006.Notably, Ms. Hochul made significant gains in the New York City suburbs: She was beating Mr. Zeldin by five percentage points in the poll, which was conducted last week, compared with the August poll, which had her trailing Mr. Zeldin by three points in the suburbs.Ms. Hochul also modestly improved her favorability rating among Republicans, while Mr. Zeldin lost some support among his party’s voters, with 77 percent of Republicans saying they would vote for him, down from 84 percent in August. Even so, Mr. Zeldin continued to hold a slim lead among independent voters and is virtually tied with Ms. Hochul in upstate New York, according to the poll, which surveyed 655 likely voters.The poll found Ms. Hochul holds a commanding lead in vote-rich New York City, with Mr. Zeldin well short of the 30 percent of votes he has said he will need to win.Mr. Zeldin, an ally of former President Donald J. Trump who has represented Suffolk County in Congress since 2015, would have to make significant inroads among independent and suburban voters in the final weeks of the campaign to overcome Ms. Hochul’s strong support in New York City and among women, Latino and Black voters.Ms. Hochul began spending heavily on television and digital advertisements in early September, many of them trying to define Mr. Zeldin as “extreme and dangerous” based on his view on abortion and his votes on Jan. 6 to overturn election results in key states. By the end of the week, her campaign will have spent roughly $7 million on the ads, according to AdImpact, a media tracking firm.Mr. Zeldin, who has struggled to replenish his campaign reserves after a costly primary, had spent just under $1 million during the same period, the firm has found. Ronald S. Lauder, the conservative cosmetics heir, has funneled more than $3 million into a pair of pro-Zeldin super PACs to try to narrow the gap, but the bulk of the groups’ ad buys attacking the governor as being soft on crime only began airing in recent days.While Mr. Zeldin has sought to amplify a handful of Republican-friendly polls showing the race as far tighter, the high-dollar donors who could reverse his financial fortunes could conclude that victory is simply slipping out of reach and put away their checkbooks, leaving him unable to defend himself from Ms. Hochul’s onslaught.The poll, which had a margin of error of 3.9 percentage points, found that other top Democrats running statewide — Senator Chuck Schumer; Thomas DiNapoli, the state comptroller; and Letitia James, the state attorney general — were also dominating their Republican opponents in their races. More

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      Who’s Winning the New York Mayor’s Race? Even Pollsters Are Confused.

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      The city’s new system of ranked-choice voting, along with a crowded field of Democrats, has complicated efforts to do comprehensive voter surveys.Much of the focus of the New York City mayoral race has centered on one or two perceived front-runners: Andrew Yang, the 2020 presidential candidate, and Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president.But that perception is almost entirely based on what has been an unusually quiet polling season. None of the three major public pollsters in the New York City region have done comprehensive surveys in the mayor’s race.And of those big three pollsters — Quinnipiac University Poll, Marist College Institute for Public Opinion and Siena College Research Institute — two have no intention of conducting any such polls before the June 22 Democratic primary. At this point in 2013, the three pollsters had together put out more than a dozen independent horse-race polls on the Democratic primary.This year, New York voters will have to continue to rely on polls from outfits with less of a New York track record, or on surveys released by parties with possibly ulterior motives, including mayoral campaigns and special interest groups.The dearth of independent polls has a lot to do with what is arguably the biggest unknown in the race for mayor (aside from who the ultimate victor will be): how exactly the city’s new system of ranked-choice voting will affect voter behavior.For the first time in a mayoral primary, city voters will be able to rank up to five candidates in order of preference. When the Board of Elections begins tabulating the results, if no candidate receives more than 50 percent of first-choice votes, all votes for the lowest-performing candidate will be eliminated, and those voters’ second-choice picks will be counted instead. The cycle continues until one winner remains.It is unclear how well-acquainted voters are with the new system, or how they will behave once they get into the voting booth. Will they in fact rank up to five candidates, or just vote for the one they prefer? Will they even be familiar enough with the candidates to rank five of them?“The reason we haven’t seen a lot of quality polling is the ranked-order voting,” said Lee Miringoff, the director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion. “There isn’t a whole lot of track record as to the behavior voters are likely to pursue once they get into the voting booth.”Don Levy, director of the Siena College Research Institute, and Doug Schwartz, the associate vice president of the Quinnipiac University Poll, offered similar views on the challenges posed by ranked-choice voting.“We worried about how hard it would be to be accurate,” Mr. Levy said.They voiced other concerns, too. Primaries are typically low-turnout affairs, which makes it hard for pollsters to find “likely voters” to survey. Voters are only just beginning to pay attention to the race. And many are presumably unaware that the primary will be in June, instead of September, as it has been in the past.“If you just think of the arithmetic of doing polling, if it’s harder to find people who are ‘likely,’ you’re going to do lots and lots of phone calls,” Mr. Levy said. “It’s going to be more expensive. It takes more time. Instead of being able to do it in three polling days, it takes six or seven.”The ballot also has 13 Democratic candidates for mayor, and it is hard for pollsters to go through the whole list and then gather voters’ second, third, fourth and fifth choices without the participant hanging up the phone.All of those considerations make polling the race in a comprehensive way “friggin’ expensive,” said Neil Newhouse, partner and co-founder of Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican polling firm out of Virginia that surveyed the mayor’s race — including all of the ranked-choice voting tabulations — for Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank in New York.In the poll, Mr. Yang received the most votes in the first round, but in the end, Mr. Adams triumphed.“It’s not predictive,” Mr. Newhouse said. “It is the classic snapshot in time.”Six weeks before the 2013 primary election, the polls suggested that Bill de Blasio, then the city’s public advocate, was still trailing City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who was long presumed to be the front-runner, and running neck-and-neck with William C. Thompson, the former New York City comptroller.But then the polls began to indicate something surprising: a Mr. de Blasio surge. In the final stretch, the polls showed Mr. de Blasio gaining on Ms. Quinn, outflanking Mr. Thompson and ultimately winning the race.“Christine Quinn was going to win, then Anthony Weiner was a player, Thompson was a safe choice and then bang — all of a sudden there’s de Blasio,” Mr. Levy said.The mayor’s race of 2021 is lacking much of that dramatic flair, and the absence of much independent public polling is not the only reason.The pandemic has kept voters and candidates on video forums for much of the campaign. It has limited opportunities for the candidates and their issues to enter everyday discussion. But the lack of trusted public polling has left close observers without the sort of information they are accustomed to.“I’m a fairly sophisticated observer and I don’t know what the hell is going on with any degree of confidence,” said Doug Muzzio, a professor of Public Affairs at Baruch College.Independent polling can serve an important purpose, by informing the public and journalists of the relative strength of the candidates, and the influence that events have on their standing..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-1jiwgt1{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;margin-bottom:1.25rem;}.css-8o2i8v{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-8o2i8v p{margin-bottom:0;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}They can also serve a practical purpose for campaigns. Though campaigns have their own internal polling, more credible-seeming public polling can be useful in convincing reluctant donors that a candidate is in fact viable. It can also draw favorable media attention and boost campaign-worker morale.Siena did do one poll in conjunction with AARP that asked respondents who were 50 and older three questions pitting the Democratic candidates against each other. Marist is slated to do a poll to determine who can participate in the June 16 debate, yet it remains unclear if there will be horse-race questions, or just issue-based questions, said Mr. Miringoff, the director.“It’s going to be very difficult, if we do it,” Mr. Miringoff added.In the absence of much polling, New Yorkers have been left to cite polls from campaigns, special interest groups, and up-and-coming polling houses, whose polling methods make some traditionalists skittish.Emerson College Polling, out of Boston, has done two polls in the race for mayor, and is expected to soon release a third.Mr. Levy, of the Siena poll, said that Emerson has a “growing track record” and is “worth taking seriously.” But he also raised concerns about Emerson’s reliance on online panels of registered voters and its use of text messaging. “The plus side of texting is people look at their texts,” Mr. Levy said. “But are you going to hit a link in a text that you’re not familiar with?”Spencer Kimball, the director of Emerson College Polling, defended the approach, suggesting that it was “the future of polling.”According to Mr. Kimball, more than 90 percent of American adults have a cellphone, while only half the population has a landline. To rule out modern communication methods is to cancel out a significant, and growing, part of the voting population, he said.“These folks that are using the live operators, that’s great,” Mr. Kimball said. “That’s $35,000 a survey and it’s not perfect.”Not every member of the political class is mourning the absence of robust public polling in the election.Mr. Levy said he and “every pollster” he knows is frustrated by the media’s comparative attention to horse-race polling, and the relative inattention to polls they do the rest of the year, which focus on how participants feel about different issues.“I like pre-election polling that at least touches on what issues are most salient to voters at the same time,” he said. More