New Polling Shows Zeldin Still In Lead But Throne-Holst Closing Recognition Gap

As the race for New York’s 1st Congressional District seat winds down, there are some indications that Democratic candidate Anna Throne-Holst has begun to close a substantial gap that polls in September showed between her and incumbent U.S. Representative Lee Zeldin.

Private polling by consultants working for the Democratic Party in mid-October showed that Ms. Throne-Holst had pulled within eight percentage points of Mr. Zeldin in the weeks following a poll conducted by Siena College and Newsday in late September, which showed Mr. Zeldin with a 15-point lead.

The polling, which was discussed with The Press by Democratic Party staff who spoke on condition of anonymity, also showed that Hillary Clinton had leapt out to a six-percentage-point lead over Republican candidate Donald Trump among 1st District voters, despite having been shown to be trailing Mr. Trump by three percentage points in the Siena/Newsday poll.

The Siena/Newsday poll was conducted before the discovery of a recording of Mr. Trump making statements about aggressive sexual advances toward women, which weakened his poll numbers nationwide and has been widely seen as a drag on other Republican candidates in House and Senate races down the ballot.

The new polling was conducted in the 72 hours leading up to the third presidential debate, about four days after the release of the video.

In addition to the narrowing split with the incumbent Mr. Zeldin, who is seeking reelection for the first time, the challengers were also buoyed by the results of the poll that showed Mr. Zeldin with less than 50 percent support among district voters.

“When you get below 50 percent, that’s dangerous ground for an incumbent,” one of the Democratic officials said. “This is a district that has always reflected the national environment pretty closely. If Hillary were to win the district by six points, as this polling shows, that’s going to be a big boost to Anna. In 2012, Tim Bishop won the district, and Barack Obama only won by less than one percentage point.”

With one week to go before Election Day, the Democrats said the information from their pollsters and the reality of other phases of the race are encouraging for the party challenger. The interpretations of the pollster in the Siena/Newsday poll had found that much of Ms. Throne-Holst’s lag was due to poor name recognition, particularly in the western part of the district.

But in the weeks since that poll, the campaign and Democratic Party’s main national political action committee, House Majority PAC, have spent nearly $1 million on television ads and mailers for Ms. Throne-Holst.

Ms. Throne-Holst’s stature outside the South Fork, where she was at the fore of local politics for eight years, has also been buoyed recently by endorsements from The New York Times and Newsday; the latter had endorsed Mr. Zeldin two years ago but this time around harshly criticized him for too often aligning himself with extreme right-wing factions of the House Republican caucus. The Throne-Holst campaign has claimed that she has received the endorsement of every newspaper of record in the district and carries the upward momentum into the final week of the race.

“Races are often about momentum at the end,” one of the party operatives said. “There’s no doubt that Anna faced a name recognition deficit, but each day and week that goes by she’s closing that gap.”

Asked to comment on Tuesday, Jennifer DiSiena, a spokeswoman for Mr. Zeldin’s campaign, said: “Their polling is not accurate, but as Throne-Holst has run her entire campaign, accuracy is not a strong suit or a priority. They clearly are putting out wrong info in a continued, desperate attempt to get local newspapers to manufacture momentum for a campaign that in reality is flailing, for good reason.”

Mr. Zeldin, meanwhile, also has mounted a robust television and door-to-door campaign touting his military service, his efforts to head off the sale of Plum Island, and his national security and foreign policy work while in Washington, D.C., in his first term. His campaign also has held up his broad base of endorsements, primarily from Republican officeholders across the district—something Ms. Throne-Holst has lagged in since her primary with David Calone, who won the support of most local Democratic elected officials.

Mr. Zeldin has been endorsed by the majority of the town board members in Riverhead, Southold, Brookhaven, Islip and Smithtown, as well as most of the Suffolk County Police unions.

Ms. Throne-Holst and Mr. Zeldin have also held more than two dozen face-to-face debates and forums across the district in the last six weeks. The pair have butted heads, heatedly at times, and have always drawn stark lines between themselves on issues surrounding Obamacare, taxes, immigration and ways to spur economic growth.