By Tom Precious
ALBANY – A year before he starts to campaign for re-election, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is seeing his job performance numbers drop among upstate voters, as well as independents, while it is rising among Democrats and liberals.
A poll this morning by NBC NY/Wall Street Journal and Marist College found 56 percent of registered voters sampled statewide think he is doing an excellent or good job in office.
But, with a shift to the left in his policy emphasis in recent months, especially with January’s new gun control law he pushed, Cuomo has seen his job approval among upstate registered voters fall below the important 50 percent mark to 49 percent. That is down from a 58 percent approval rating just last
October, Marist pollsters said.
In New York City, he is running strong – with a 60 percent approval rating.
On the upside are opinions of Cuomo by self-described liberals, who now give him a 75 percent approval rating from 62 percent in October. Sixty-seven percent of Democrats give him a positive rating, up from 61 percent last fall.
But Cuomo, who seeks to be a cross-over politician with policies to appeal to Democrats and Republicans, has seen his perception among GOP registered voters drop from a 59 percent approval rating last October to 46 percent now. Just 39 percent of conservatives view his job performance favorably, down from 54 percent, while the views of moderates of his job performance have skipped from 63 percent to 58 percent since October.
While Cuomo dismissed media speculation in January that he was shifting to the left following a State of the State address heavy with liberal-leaning policy plans, 37 percent of registered voters surveyed now describe him as a moderate. That is down from 57 percent in January 2012. And 40 percent, the poll said, perceive him as paying too much attention to national politics and not enough to New York state.
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Andrew Cuomo
