When word spread last week that former Representative Anthony Weiner was contemplating a mayoral run, the questions of what it meant for the electoral future immediately arose. How would his candidacy affect the race? Would the Democratic primary become a showdown between Weiner and Christine Quinn? Could people forgive the disgraced politician enough to elect him?

Well, as this was all happening, NBC and Marist University took to the streets (figuratively speaking, of course) to find out what Weiner's chances of success were. And, yesterday, those numbers came in with a report titled "Weiner Candidacy for Mayor Could
Scramble Democratic Primary Contest."

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New Yorkers aren't so pleased with the NYPD's stop and frisk campaign, though at the same time, they give Police Commissioner Ray Kelly high marks, according to a new poll from the folks at Quinnipiac University.

Only 39 percent of folks approve of the stop and frisk campaign, including just 19 percent of African-Americans. A majority of New Yorkers across educational and income groups disapprove of the tactic that has been stubbornly defended by Kelly and Mayor Michael Bloomberg as an effective deterrent to crime. The Quinnipiac pollsters have asked this question in six different polls starting in March, 2012, and the approval number has steadily declined over the period.

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New Yorkers believe that the economic benefits of drilling for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale outweigh the risk of potentially harmful environmental repercussions, according to today's Quinnipiac University Poll.

The poll finds that 44 percent of New Yorkers think the economic pros of hydraulic fracturing outweigh its environmental cons -- while 42 percent say the potential damage would be too great.

Let's just hope that the poll respondents aren't relying too heavily on some of the shady hydraulic fracturing "science" that's been floating around lately -- like last spring's University at Buffalo study on fracking in the Marcellus Shale.

Last month the university shut down its Shale Resources and Society Institute amid findings of bias and compromised research coming out of the institute. The study released by SRSI in May found that the environmental risk of fracking in Pennsylvania, a hotbed for natural gas drilling, was decreasing and the risk associated with fracking in the Marcellus Shale would be even lower.

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C.S. Muncy

Good work, everybody!

A new poll released yesterday by Quinnipiac University suggests that New Yorkers think that first responders, state agencies, Mayor Bloomberg, and the Red Cross all did a bang-up job in responding to Hurricane Sandy.

Given everything we already know about the response -- public housing residents living weeks without heat, water, and electricity without so much as a door-knock from official responders, a breakdown of the health care system so severe that many residents went the better part of a month without critical medicine; and Bloomberg's reported "Fuck you" response to the Rockaway's first request for National Guard assistance -- the poll results are surprising, to say the least.

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Pete Souza/The White House

Think this guy coming out for marriage equality had anything to do with it?

Maybe they should have called Barack Obama the homosexual "Black Abe Lincoln."

Buried in the polls showing that Obama's same-sex marriage support has had no effect on his own re-election prospects (debunking the myth that his gay support would hurt him) and that it seems to have moved "strong support" for marriage equality positively is this gem: a majority of African Americans now support marriage equality, according to a just published poll for ABC News.

This is pretty big news, considering lower support for gay rights by black people than by white people has been (mistakenly and disproportionately) blamed for passing Prop 8 in California, used (unsuccessfully) as a wedge to try to stop the Marriage Equality Act from passing here in New York by Rev. Sen. Ruben Diaz, and touted by cultural critic Touré as a black voter death knell right after the President's coming out just two weeks ago. Like Touré, even the National Organization for Marriage believed the divide was so great between these two groups that their key to victory would be to "drive a wedge between gays and blacks."

To get to the bottom of this, the Voice spoke with the man behind the poll, Gary Langer, the President of Langer Research Associates and pollster for ABC News.

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Not according to the majority of New Yorkers...

Bad news, fatsos: according to the vast majority of New Yorkers, you are more miserable and less successful than non-fatsos. That's according to a recently released Marist/NY1 poll, anyway, which shows that more than 70 percent of New Yorkers think fat people are more unhappy and less successful than skinny people.

So, does this mean it's impossible to be fat and happy? Of course not -- it's just the opinion of the majority of New York's pretentious population.

According to the poll, only 13 percent of New Yorkers don't agree that thin people are happier than their full-figured counterparts. Seventy-two percent, however, think thin is in, and skinny folks are happier than fatsos.

When it comes to success, 72 percent of New Yorkers think skinny people are more successful, with only 8-percent of those polled disagreeing with the claim.

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It's a pollapalooza!

Shortly after a Quinnipiac University Polling Institute came out identifying New Yorkers' hatred of indoor smoking and love of bike shares, yet more info has come out detailing voters' tastes.

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The honeymood period is apparently still going strong for Andrew Cuomo -- a survey of voters from Quinnipac University found that New Yorkers approve of the governor by a whopping ratio of 69-19.

But just because voters love Cuomo doesn't mean they're happy with politics in general -- on that topic, voters said 58-42 that they were dissatisfied with the way things were going in New York.

Perhaps most surprisingly, the poll found that New Yorkers are actually quite keen on gambling in their own state, with voters favoring the creation of casinos 54-38. Gambling in New York could take the form of an Atlantic City-style casino and hotel" at Aqueduct Race Track. Perhaps unsurprisingly, men favor gambling initiatives more than women do, reasoning that it would be good for the economy, and therefore worth the cost it would take to build such a facility.

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New Yorkers think that Ray Kelly is just swell and really like to embarrass one another, according to a new poll.

Indeed, the stats suggest that many city-dwellers are a strange bunch.

Even though Kelly appeared in an Islamophobic vid used for cop training, most New Yorkers don't think the NYPD is anti-Muslim, according to a Quinnipiac University Polling Institute Survey.

Sixty percent say that the police have acted "appropriately" in dealing with Muslims.

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As Obama begins to make the case for a second term, a joint poll run by ABC News and the Washington Post has found that the president currently has a solid lead on Mitt Romney in a general election matchup, with 52 percent of Americans saying they would support Obama, over 43 percent for Romney. The poll was conducted by telephone for four days last week, among a random national sample of 1,000 adults.

This comes just after Obama told Matt Lauer in a pre-Superbowl interview that he "deserves a second term," even though the economy isn't doing so well right now. The president admitted to the news anchor that a lot more work needs to be done. "But we've made progress. And the key right now is to make sure we don't start turning in a new direction that could throw that progress off."

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