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How New Yorkers really feel about the candidates

Bottom line: Your friends could be telling you they're voting for Clinton, but actually, they might be checking off Trump's name in the voting booth.
Curious visitors read sticky notes on a wall. (Photo by Construction Photography/Corbis)
Curious visitors read sticky notes on a wall.

From matzoh baking to riding the subway — or at least attempting to — the presidential candidates are really trying to out-New York each other and win over voters ahead of the state's crucial primary on Tuesday. 

Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, along with GOP front-runner Donald Trump, are all claiming New Yorker status — Sanders, a Brooklyn native; Trump from Queens, and Clinton as the former senator from New York. For the record: Asked in recent NBC News/WSJ/Marist polling which candidate voters thought was the "real New Yorker," 41 percent answered Trump. 

RELATED: The true New York test? How 2016 candidates eat pizza

But their pizza eating-style may not be enough to sway voters, especially when some appear to already have their minds made up — and when sometimes going to a polling place has nothing to do with the candidate at all ... 

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Bottom line: Your friends could be telling you they're voting for Clinton, but actually, when they're behind closed curtains at the voting booth, they might be checking Trump's name. The same polling shows Trump leading in the state among Republican voters, while Clinton's lead continues to grow over the Vermont senator. 

For the past few months, NBC News has collected thousands of anonymous "election confessions" from people around the country who might otherwise hesitate to share their views on the candidates or the state of the country in general and that's exactly what we've discovered. We rounded up some of the more striking submissions from those who chose to identify as New York voters. 

The "confessions" vary from those who "cringe" at the thought of Clinton's PR stunts to those who've "barely paid any attention to the Republican candidates because ... I just can't" to shhh "I don't know the names of the candidates" — and even those who are still holding out for a Michael Bloomberg run that would "destroy soda forever."

Check out what people all around New York state are saying about the candidates — when they're allowed to be completely anonymous.