Eric Adams is right that “you can just see [from] the poll numbers that the action of our national government has taken a toll on New York City. New Yorkers are angry.”
Indeed, 85% of registered NYC voters including 82% of Democrats told Quinnipiac in a new poll they’re concerned “the city will not be able to accommodate” newly arrived migrants. New Yorkers were twice as likely as not (62%-33%, including 50%-45% among Democrats) to agree with the mayor that this wave of new arrivals could “destroy the city.”
But while Adams says “I join in that anger” as 80% of New Yorkers feel the federal government is doing too little to help the city respond to the surge of migrants while just 6% feel it’s doing too much, voters are directing their anger at him.
Only 28% approve of the job Adams is doing, while 58% disapprove.
That puts him 30 points below even — the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the 27-year history of the survey.
The next lowest rating was Mike Bloomberg midway through a first term where he raised taxes after vowing not to do so as a candidate and focused obsessively on an Olympics bid New Yorkers loathed. But Mayor Mike spent nine figures of his own money to repair his image in time to win a second term.
Adams doesn’t have a private fortune, only an aggressive fundraising operation that’s now the subject of a federal probe. Amid rumors of an imminent indictment, New Yorkers are far more likely (52%) than not (20%) to think he did something illegal or unethical.
Even among Democrats, just 35% approve of Adams’ performance while 49% disapprove, numbers far worse than those of Gov. Hochul (63%-31%), Public Advocate Jumaane Williams (57%-14%), Comptroller Brad Lander (49%-16%) or Council Speaker Adrienne Adams (43%-15%).
It’s not only the migrant response, with just 26% of voters approving compared to 66% disapproving, that’s soured New Yorkers on Adams.
On public schools, the numbers are 31%-53%, on the city budget he says he’s slashing because of the migrants they’re 22%-66%, and on homelessness they’re 22%-72%.
(Meanwhile, 65% of voters approve of the city’s unique right-to-shelter mandate Adams is fighting in court, double the 31% who disapprove.)
Only 33% approve of the job Adams is doing on crime, and 91% say it’s a serious problem. Far more New Yorkers say they feel less safe (38%) than a year ago than more safe (8%).
A record 67% of voters say they’re dissatisfied with the way things are going in the city. There are 10 New Yorkers who feel very dissatisfied (41%) for every one (4%) who feels very satisfied.
Back to Adams, most voters don’t think he has strong leadership qualities (40%-55%), don’t think he understands the problems of people like them (38%-56%), and don’t that he’s honest and trustworthy (43%-54%).
He’s underwater on all these measures among every group surveyed except for Black voters: Republicans, Democrats and independents; men and women; whites, Latinos and Asians; and voters in every borough and of every age.
Still, Adams is in a stronger position politically than those terrible numbers suggest given that his opposition is split between people to his right, who mostly won’t have votes in a Democratic primary, and people to his left who are already on a clock to find a single candidate to raise money and build institutional support for a potential challenge in 2025 to a Democratic incumbent who’s also the city’s second Black mayor.
Adams happens to be the first Democratic mayor to succeed a Democratic mayor since the city’s first Black mayor, David Dinkins, upset Ed Koch’s bid for an unprecedented fourth term in the 1989 party primary before eking out a much closer than expected win over Rudolph Giuliani.
Four years later, Dinkins lost an equally tight rematch with the Republican, beginning what turned out to be a 20-year interregnum of non-Democratic mayors running an overwhelmingly Democratic city.
Dinkins was a very different mayor at a very different moment in the city’s history, but once again a borough president who moved from that mostly ceremonial office into the big job at a moment when New York is in rough shape has been appealing to Washington for help — meaning money — that clearly isn’t coming.
On Friday, Adams finally conceded “the cold reality that help is not on the way in the immediate future” from the federal government.
Adams, who knows how to read a poll, is running out of time to change New Yorkers’ increasingly angry narrative about him.
Siegel (harrysiegel@gmail.com) is an editor at The City and a columnist for the Daily News.
Harry Siegel: The bad polls are bad news for Mayor Eric Adams
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11.12.2023
Eric Adams is right that “you can just see [from] the poll numbers that the action of our national government has taken a toll on New York City. New Yorkers are angry.”
Indeed, 85% of registered NYC voters including 82% of Democrats told Quinnipiac in a new poll they’re concerned “the city will not be able to accommodate” newly arrived migrants. New Yorkers were twice as likely as not (62%-33%, including 50%-45% among Democrats) to agree with the mayor that this wave of new arrivals could “destroy the city.”
But while Adams says “I join in that anger” as 80% of New Yorkers feel the federal government is doing too little to help the city respond to the surge of migrants while just 6% feel it’s doing too much, voters are directing their anger at him.
Only 28% approve of the job Adams is doing, while 58% disapprove.
That puts him 30 points below even — the lowest approval rating of any mayor in the 27-year history of the survey.
The next lowest rating was Mike Bloomberg midway through a first term where he raised taxes after vowing not to do so as a candidate and focused obsessively on an Olympics bid New Yorkers........
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