Gov. Kathy Hochul can run, but she cannot hide from the latest poll numbers and her lousy record on crime.

Hochul, who is running neck-to-neck with her Republican challenger Rep. Lee Zeldin, alleged on Sunday that “Master manipulators have this conspiracy going” to “convince people in Democratic states that they’re not as safe.” But “the safer places are the Democratic states.”

Hochul is desperate to have New Yorkers think the crime surge is all in their head. She even asked Zeldin in their one and only debate, why locking up criminals is “so important” to him?

Never mind that citywide murders last year were 67% higher than in 2017, and that, though they’ve fallen slightly this year, other crimes continue to soar: As of Sunday, rapes in Gotham were up 10.9% over last year, robberies 32.4%, grand larcenies 38.5% and car thefts 34.5%.

If you run the numbers on crime in NYC you will see that it is not a conspiracy theory offered by Republicans to scare New Yorkers.

There were more than 25,000 people who were victims of serious crime in New York City in the first 10 months of 2022 compared with the same period in 2019. That includes 84 more people dead, 559 more shot and wounded, 3,426 more robbed, 4,185 more seriously assaulted, 4,186 more burglary victims, almost 6,888 more grand larceny victims and 6,552 more cars stolen than in 2019.

Hochul can deny the statistics all she wants, but many New Yorkers know that gut feeling they have if they have to commute into the city. It’s fear of becoming a victim.

And that feeling can be laid directly on the desk of Hochul and the progressive Democrats in Albany.