Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is leading Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer by 19 points in a hypothetical matchup of the 2028 New York primary for Senate, according to a survey released Friday.
A poll by left-leaning data firm Data for Progress, first obtained by Politico, found that 55% of Democratic likely voters said they supported or leaned toward supporting Ocasio-Cortez, while 36% backed or leaned toward backing Schumer and 9% were undecided. The survey comes after Schumer faced massive pushback from his own party over his voting to advance a GOP spending bill backed by President Donald Trump.
“Senator Schumer is in real trouble, and that trouble’s not going away,” Bill O’Reilly, a board member at the William F. Buckley Jr. Program at Yale, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “The New York left has been furious with Schumer for years, and time is finally catching up with him. If poll numbers stay anywhere near where they are now, Senator Schumer might be headed to golf-cart Florida rather than to reelection in 2028.”
Several prominent Democratic leaders have notably called for Schumer to resign in recent weeks, including Democratic Maryland Rep. Glenn Ivey, Democratic Michigan State Senator Mallory McMorrow. A handful of left-wing youth activist organizations have also called for Schumer to step down.
“This poll really does show that Democrats are united in just wanting to stand up, wanting to fight, wanting to see someone taking a stand for them,” Danielle Deiseroth, executive director of Data for Progress, told Politico.
Of those surveyed, Democrats named “threats to democracy” as the most important issue to their vote, followed by “programs like Social Security and Medicare,” and “economy, jobs, and inflation.”
The Democratic Party has been struggling to land on strong messaging and communicate with voters since Trump defeated former Vice President Kamala Harris in the November 2024 presidential election and Republicans notched control of both chambers of Congress. Democratic lawmakers are also grappling with a slate of recent polls showing that Americans are dissatisfied with their leadership, along with the Democratic Party’s approval rating dropping to an all-time low in March.
Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin acknowledged in a Feb. 18 memo that Americans view the Republican Party as “the party of the working class and Democrats as the party of the elites.”
Several national Democratic committees and lawmakers, including Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, launched nationwide tours of host town hall events across the U.S. in March, largely aimed at targeting voters in red districts.
Data for Progress conducted the survey of 767 likely Democratic primary voters in New York from March 26-31, using SMS and web panel respondents. The margin of error was plus or minus four percentage points.
Ocasio-Cortez’s office and Schumer’s office did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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