Lee Miringoff, director of polling at Marist said, "She’s below 50 percent against Ford, and a third of Democrats is undecided. Her approval rating among Democrats statewide is only 31 percent."

Gillibrand leads Ford across the board, but both are basically unknown across the state. Liz has more on the spread.

UPDATE: Ford's spokesman said the poll is "showing declining approval numbers for Senators Schumer and Gillibrand."

Fifty-six percent of the 805 registered voters surveyed said they had seen one of the two ads Paterson's campaign began airing two weeks ago, but of that subset, 65 percent still do not believe Paterson should run for governor. The overall number slice of voters surveyed who don't think Paterson should run is 63 percent. In a hypothetical Democratic primary match-up, Cuomo would trounce Paterson 72 to 21 percent. A poll last week showed Cuomo leading by 59 points in the same match up.

"Right now, Andrew Cuomo has a clear path to become governor," Lee Miringoff, the Marist pollster, said in a statement. "If he could fast-forward to next November, I'm sure he would."

The poll shows Cuomo beating Rick Lazio, the only declared Republican candidate, 69 percent to 24 percent.

Miringoff said the poll also showed “Bloomberg’s numbers had this low-50s element.”

The methodology here was slightly different than in earlier Marist  polls. Instead of calling mostly land lines and "random dialing" to expand the pool of participants, this latest poll also reached people on their cell phones and used "interactive voice recordings." But still, the results were clear. Thompson was improving at Bloomberg was hovering, said Miringoff, who did not release the exact figures.

He said they normally take a poll right before Election Day but do not release it, since it may be confused with early election results or exit polling. The latest Marist poll was released on October 30.

Thompson supporters – who are taking shots at allies who didn’t do enough to help – may have found comfort in an independent poll showing their prospects improving. The internal poll the Thompson campaign released was largely dismissed as propaganda by me and others.

But Miringoff said he doubted releasing the results would have affected who won the race. “Although campaigns love to think momentum is created by a poll resulted, people sitting at home are not sitting at home deciding how to vote.” Miringoff also said discouraged Thompson supporters weren’t the only ones who may have been motivated by the Marist numbers.

“It could have been a wake-up call to Bloomberg people,” he said.

That’s according to a new Marist poll, which shows Bloomberg leading Thompson 53 to 38 among likely voters, up slightly from last week, when Bloomberg led 52 to 36 percent.

In the latest poll, Bloomberg leads Thompson among Democrats, 47 to 39 percent.

Liz Benjamin noted that the 45 percent figure on the term limits question hasn't increased during the campaign. Adam Lisberg finds Lee Miringoff knocking down Geoff Garin's claim about Bloomberg's support softening. One figure that stood out to me: 25 percent of registered voters are “unsure” of or “never heard” of Thompson.

Paterson is being openly defiant for now. Since last week, Paterson's approval rating has fallen three points to 17 percent and Obama's approval rating has slipped 5 points to 52 percent.

However, the poll, conducted by Marist College, found that only one in four of the 616 registered voters surveyed want Paterson to run next year.

Below, pollster Lee Miringoff discusses the results:

Gillibrand now trails Pataki by four points; in July, she led the former governor in a hypothetical matchup. Her approval rating is 26 percent.

The polling--by Marist--also found that Chuck Schumer enjoys a 58 percent approval rating.

Below, pollster Lee Miringoff discusses the results:

Marist College found that 20 percent of voters approve of the way the incumbent Democrat is doing his job, compared to 22 percent in a Siena poll in July and 21 percent in a Marist Poll in June. All results are within these polls' margin of error.

Additionally, the poll finds 68 percent of voters surveyed disagree with Paterson's handling of the state budget, and 66 percent of voters surveyed offered disapproval with how the governor is handling the economic crisis.

Below, Marist pollster Lee Miringoff explains the findings.

In a head-to-head match-up against Bill Thompson, Bloomberg leads 48 to 35 percent. Against Tony Avella, Bloomberg leads 53 to 29 percent.

In a Democratic primary, Thompson leads Avella 47 to 18 percent, with 35 percent undecided.

Pollster Lee Miringoff notes, “Weiner’s withdrawal from the race has benefited Thompson the most. In Marist’s May survey, Thompson received 29% of the vote to Avella’s 8%. Weiner was the leader at that time with 34% of the vote. 29% of Democrats were unsure.”

In the public advocate’s race, Mark Green comes close to the 40 percent he needs to avoid a run-off. Civil liberties attorney Normal Siegel has 16 percent, City Councilman Bill de Blasio has 9 percent and City Councilman Eric Gioia has 8 percent.

Bloomberg’s job approval is now at 59 percent, up from 52 percent in February, which was down from the 59 percent approval rating he had in a November Marist poll. 

Thirty-nine percent of voters say his work is "fair or poor."

There is no difference, statistically, between Democrats and Republicans when it comes to Bloomberg's approval—58 and 57 percent, respectively, say he's doing a good job.

Sixty-eight percent of unenrolled voters say the same.

Notably, in a hypothetical Democratic primary, Anthony Weiner beats Bill Thompson 34-29 percent. (Tony Avella has eight percent.)

In a hypothetical general election, Bloomberg still crushes any Democratic opponent, but Weiner performs slightly better.

The poll says if the election were held today, Bloomberg would defeat Weiner 50-36 percent, with 14 percent undecided. Against Bill Thompson, Bloomberg would win 51-33 percent, with 16 percent undecided.

One other statistic worth noting: 52 percent of African-Americans say Bloomberg’s job approval rating is “excellent” or “good,” while 48 percent rate it as “fair,” “poor” or “unsure.”

"Until he falls below that, then the yellow signs of caution are still just caution signs," Miringoff said.