Hillary For Mayor? NYC Polls Show De Blasio Would Win Over Republican Challenger, But Clinton Remains Popular

New York City was well on its way this week to having another liberal mayor. A Quinnipiac University poll released Tuesday showed incumbent Mayor Bill De Blasio, a Democrat whose term ends in 2018, was favored 59-25 over Republican challenger Paul Massey.

Another 47 percent of respondents said De Blasio should be re-elected, a departure from the 48 percent who said in January that he didn't deserve to extend his time in office.

"You can't beat somebody with nobody. And if the somebody is Mayor Bill de Blasio, the Quinnipiac University Poll numbers say the other names add up to nobody," Quinnipiac's Maurice Carroll said in a news release. "In a Democratic primary, de Blasio trounces everyone ... Paul Massey? First, New Yorkers would have to learn who he is."

Massey, a real estate millionaire, may have supporters in Staten Island — the only borough where De Blasio was behind in the Quinnipiac poll — but the numbers would indicate he doesn't pose much of a challenge.

A person who does is former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who lost the presidential election last November and has been cagey about her future since. Grocery store mogul John Catsimatidis told the Real Deal in January that Clinton was still deciding whether she'd run to lead the Big Apple.

"I spoke to her about it, but she didn’t indicate or signal to me [whether she would run]," he said. "She didn’t say never, she didn’t say no. In my personal opinion it’s 50-50."

A Quinnipiac poll from January found that if Clinton were to run against De Blasio as an independent, she would likely come away the victor. Clinton would score 49 percent of votes to De Blasio's 29 percent, CBS News reported.

Though Clinton has been burned by polls before, she may have public opinion on her side in New York City, where 79 percent of people voted for the Democrat in the general election, according to DNA Info. And this week, amid the rumors about her possible candidacy, social media users spotted (presumably unofficial) "Hillary for Mayor" signs going up around the city.