As the New York primary looms, presidential candidates are trying to be the best New Yorkers they can be -- whether it’s former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton riding the subway or GOP hopeful Donald Trump talking about his favorite pizza places.
Three presidential candidates have close ties to the Empire State, and are hoping to leverage that into primary votes. Trump has spent most of his life in New York City. Clinton represented New York for eight years as a senator. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was born and raised in Brooklyn.
But an NBC News/WSJ/Marist New York poll shows that it’s party identification, not background, that really determines whether voters think Trump, Clinton or Sanders is the most authentic New Yorker.
Overall, 41 percent of registered voters in New York say Trump is the "real New Yorker" of the three candidates. Twenty-five percent select Sanders, and 23 percent choose Clinton.
Yet the differences are starker when the results are broken down by party. Among Republicans, 76 percent believe Trump is the true New Yorker, compared to just 22 percent of Democratic voters. Meanwhile, just 8 percent of Republicans choose Clinton, compared to 36 percent of Democrats, and another 8 percent of Republicans select Sanders, versus 33 percent of Democrats.
Independents fall in between. Forty-four percent view Trump as the real New Yorker, while 27 percent say it's Sanders and 16 percent say Clinton.
Along with party identification, political ideology matters, too. Forty percent of liberals deem Sanders the real New Yorker, and 29 percent favor Clinton. Only 21 percent of liberals consider Trump to be the most authentic New Yorker.
Conversely, 61 percent of conservatives say Trump is the real New Yorker. Only 18 percent of conservatives think Clinton is more of a New Yorker, and only 13 percent choose Sanders.
What do you think? Who’s the real New Yorker?
Weigh in on a nonscientific Twitter poll.
The NBC/WSJ/Marist poll was conducted April 6-10 and included 1,987 registered voters with a margin of error of +/- 2.2 percentage points.
Editor's note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims -- 1.6 billion members of an entire religion -- from entering the U.S.