Should Pataki, Bloomberg Run In '08?

The vast majority of New York voters think the state's top elected Republicans, Gov. George Pataki and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, should definitely not run for president in 2008, a statewide poll reported Friday.

And, voters continue to have mixed feelings about whether Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani should run for the White House, the WNBC-TV/Marist College Institute for Public Opinion poll reported.

As was the case in a May WNBC/Marist poll, the new survey also has Republican Giuliani leading Clinton among New York voters in a possible 2008 matchup while Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona runs about even with Clinton. That is bad news for Clinton in a state with 5 million Democrats and just 3 million Republicans.

Seventy-five percent of New York voters questioned for the new poll said Pataki, the lame-duck, three-term governor, should not run for president. He is eyeing such a run and has been making regular visits in recent months to Iowa and New Hampshire, the two states that traditionally lead the presidential nominating process.

Seventy-three percent of voters said Bloomberg shouldn't run. The billionaire Democrat-turned-Republican has said repeatedly that he will not seek the White House and will instead concentrate on giving the bulk of his fortune to charity once he ends his second term as mayor at the end of 2009.

"For both of them, there is not great send-off from the home state," said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist institute.

As with national polls, Clinton is the front-runner in her adopted New York among potential 2008 Democratic presidential contenders. The poll had 42 percent of New York Democrats supporting her for the 2008 nomination and 24 percent favoring former Vice President Al Gore. Other Democrats were in single digits.

While 62 percent of Democrats said Clinton should run for president, just 46 percent of all New York voters surveyed felt that way and 49 percent said she should not run. Sixty-four percent said that it was unlikely the former first lady could be elected president.

Among New York's GOP voters, Giuliani led McCain, 38 percent to 20 percent, as the favorite for the party's 2008 nomination. Fifty-one percent of voters, including 71 percent of Republicans, said Giuliani should run for president while 44 percent said he should not run.

The latest poll has Giuliani leading Clinton, 52 percent to 43 percent, among all voters. In a possible McCain-Clinton matchup, 48 percent of New York voters favored McCain and 46 percent opted for Clinton.

Marist's telephone poll of 800 registered voters was conducted June 11-14 and has a sampling error margin of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.