Poll: 41% of New Yorkers think Weiner should stay, 46% think he should resign

The gender split isn’t what you might expect…

…although, per a separate question about whether people would be more likely to vote for him or against him for mayor now, his NYC ambitions are well and truly sunk:

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Can he hang onto his House seat? Anecdotal evidence collected from his constituents suggests they’re ready to forgive and forget (“I think he did the right thing, I kind of respected it at the end”), but Philip Klein notes that Weiner’s district is actually more Republican than New York City is generally. Let me add a caveat, then, to what I said last night about him surviving this scandal if he plays his cards right. Caveat: He can survive it unless he turns out to have lied at the press conference too. The public can, I think, tolerate near-pathological lying by a politician if he comes clean later and seems genuinely contrite, but if he’s caught lying during his alleged act of contrition, though? Too much, too much.

Does this qualify as a lie?

In a series of messages dating back to Sept. 17, 2010, Weiner wrote to 40-year-old Lisa Weiss — a Nevada blackjack dealer who went back and forth with Weiner on Facebook for more than a year — that he was interested in meeting her.

“i’m ready for a vegas trip. truth telling during the day. got a night plan for us?” Weiner wrote, according to a transcript of 220 messages posted on RadarOnline.com…

He said [at the press conference] he had never met or had a physical relationship with any of the women and was not even sure of their ages.

Weiner also said he had never had sex outside of his marriage.

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So he was, apparently, open to meeting these women, although he never followed through? Or was he just stringing this particular woman along with hints of meeting in order to keep her talking and play out the online fantasy? Actually, never mind that. Here’s a better question from Steve Kornacki: Why wouldn’t this guy want to resign? He’s not much of a legislator. The whole point of his congressional career, it seems, is simply to position him to run for mayor, which ain’t happening now in the near term. Is his new plan to hang around the House for another five years in order to have a shot at the mayor’s race in 2016? If another Democrat is elected mayor next year and runs for reelection, he’ll have to wait until 2020 at the earliest. Why doesn’t he just quit and go do something he’s good at? 10 p.m., MSNBC. Move over, Big Ed.

Reporters asked Harry Reid today what he’d do if Weiner called him for advice. Click the image for his answer.

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