Today’s Siena poll finds Democrat Andrew Cuomo continues to hold a comfortable double-digit lead over his GOP challenger, Carl Paladino, whom 61 percent of New Yorkers polled believe is a “loose cannon” lacking the temperament to be governor.

Cuomo is up 56-32 among likely voters. (Remember that Siena’s first post-primary poll included all registered voters and showed the AG up by 33 percentage points, leading Paladino’s campaign to reject the outcome as “suspicious”).

Cuomo has a huge 70-17 percent lead in New York City, and a strong 54-35 lead in the downstate suburbs. Upstaters are nearly evenly divided, with 45 percent for Cuomo and 43 percent for Paladino.

Cuomo’s favorable/unfavorable rating is 56-37, while Paladino’s is 30-59. Also, the Paladino campaign’s effort to paint the AG as too much of an Albany insider to reform Albany isn’t working so well, as 52 percent of voters polled disagreed with that sentiment.

Paladino ties with Cuomo on the topic of taxes. Otherwise, Cuomo is far out ahead on everything from education and the economy to health care and making residents proud to be New Yorkers.

“Paladino has a lot of work to do, but he successfully came from behind in the Republican primary to overwhelmingly win that race,” Siena pollster Steve Greenberg said.

“But the time to Election Day is slowly slipping away. We know that four weeks is a long time in a political campaign – after all, just look at how interesting the last week has been – but Paladino has to convince voters that he’d be a better governor than Cuomo. As of early October, that certainly appears to be a daunting task.”

That task is made harder by the fact that half of likely voters have an unfavorable view of the Tea Party, although those voters are overwhelmingly with Paladino (69-15). Cuomo has a bigger lead with voters who say they have an unfavorable view of that movement (89-4).

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