(CNN) - It's no surprise but a new poll shows President Barack Obama with a strong lead in the solidly blue state of New York.
Fifty-six percent of voters in the state said they would pick Obama, while 31% said they would support Mitt Romney, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday.
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Obama carried New York by a landslide in the 2008 election against Republican Sen. John McCain, winning the state with 63% of the vote. The president frequently travels to New York City for fundraising events.
Interestingly, the new poll indicates the Catholic vote in the state is split, 44% to 44%, between Romney and Obama. The numbers come months after an uproar ignited over an Obama administration policy that would require religiously-affiliated institutions to include contraception coverage in healthcare plans, a rule that angered several groups within the Catholic Church, as it opposes birth control.
Following the outcry, the administration amended the policy to mandate insurance companies, not the institutions, offer contraception free of charge to women employed by said organizations.
A number of lawsuits followed in the wake of the controversy, and Thursday's poll shows Catholic voters are divided on the claims. While a majority, 55%-38%, disapprove of lawsuits by Catholic institutions challenging the Obama administration, a majority support lawsuits led by the Catholic church, 51%-45%.
"How times have changed. Once upon a time, Democrats and Catholics were one and the same. Now Democratic voters think the Catholic Church is too involved in New York politics," said Maurice Carroll, the director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
The president, however, leads Romney among Protestants, 55%-31%, and among Jews, 72%-24%, according to the survey.
Another Quinnipiac poll this week also showed strong support for the Empire State's Democratic governor, Andrew Cuomo, who's rumored to be a potential 2016 presidential contender, and high marks for Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who's running to keep her seat this year.
For Thursday's survey, Quinnipiac interviewed 1,504 New York State voters by phone between May 22 and May 28. The poll has a sampling error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.
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