New York (WBEN) - The Republican primary for New York's newly-drawn 23rd congressional district is less than a month away and the campaigning is expected to heat up.
Their will be two elections on August 23rd in the district, one for the Republican primary and a special election to fill out the rest of U.S. Rep. Tom Reed's term. The front runners for the Republican primary is businessman Carl Paladino and chair of the New York State Republican Committee, Nick Langworthy.
Paladino or Langworthy? Who's running the better campaign so far?
"I don't think we can say yet because I don't think it really his geared up. I think in the next month, you're going to see a lot more attention to traditional campaign techniques, a lot more television, a lot more radio. If you live in that district, you're likely to start receiving mail coming in," says Carl Calabrese, political strategist and analyst.
According to a poll conducted by WPAi Intelligence and released by Paladino last week, Paladino is currently favored to win this race by 30 points.
"I took a look at that poll. My first thought was is a reputable, and it's coming from a company that Ted Cruz uses, and also was used by Glenn Younkin in his victorious gubernatorial race in Virginia last year. So it's a reputable company," said Calabrese.
They polled 604 Republican voters from July 9-11 and reports a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points.
"Carl Paladino has put a million and a half dollars of his own money into the campaign. That was smart, because that's going to get him off to a quick start. He's released a reputable poll that shows him up considerably. And at this point, you know, he's got the advantage going into last month," Calabrese said.
Nick Langworthy is not as well known as Paladino, according to Calabrese and the poll. The poll says less 30 percent of Republican primary voters have heard of Langworthy, and just 13 percent have a favorable image of him.
He's (Langworthy) has raised a little over $300,000, which is a fair sum and should get him going fairly quickly. His biggest problem right now is he is not nearly as well known as Carl Paladino. His name identification is low and so therefore his opening salvo in his campaign is going to just be to introduce himself to the voters of that district, whereas Carl Paladino has got that advantage, he ran for governor in 2010. He did very, very well in the 10 counties that make up this district. He's been pretty high profile ever since that run for governor and so his name ID is very high. People know him," says Calabrese.
"The constituency of that of this congressional district is pretty much the Trump constituency. These are folks who believe very deeply in Donald Trump voted for him and huge margins, as they did for Carl Paladino. So that's certainly an advantage for Paladino going into this race."
The new NY-23 district consists predominantly of New York's Southern Tier. The district includes portions of multiple counties including Erie, Chautauqua, Cattaraugus, Allegany, Steuben, Chemung and Schuyler. Even though the map was redrawn, the majority of the population is heavily Republican.
The winner of this primary will face the Democratic opponent in the general election, Max Della Pia. Primaries typically have a low turnout but Calabrese figures that due to the confusion of various dates and new maps, the turnout for the primary will remain low.
"Primary turnouts are always low and I suspect this one will be as well, simply because it's a primary. Secondly, because there's been so much confusion. I don't think in all my years in politics, I've ever seen an election shrouded in so much confusion. We have different dates coming up. We have different maps. You can't blame people for being confused. So it's always difficult to get folks out in a primary," said Calabrese. "Elections are always about turnout."