It was not to be, according to a poll released Monday that showed Cuomo tallying the lowest approval ratings in his more than eight years in office.
In a survey of 778 registered voters, Siena College found that Cuomo has had a precipitous 8-point drop in his favorability rating, down to 43 percent from 51 percent last month. A full 50 percent of those polled had a unfavorable opinion of Cuomo, a Democrat, up 7 points from last month.
And that may have been the good news: Cuomo’s job-performance rating was even worse, with just 35 percent of those surveyed saying he was doing a “excellent” or “good” job. Almost twice that — 64 percent — said Cuomo was doing a “fair” or “poor” job, another sharp rise from January.
Cuomo was not alone. Siena found that Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer’s favorability had also slipped 6 percentage points, to 47 percent; and 46 percent of those surveyed said they held an unfavorable view of New York’s junior senator. Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who recently launched a presidential campaign, also saw her favorability slip, to 44 percent, although that is well above her unfavorability rating of 34 percent.
On the question of job approval, Cuomo had similar ratings to a New York politician he usually rails against: President Donald Trump.
Indeed, while Cuomo had a 35 percent positive job-approval rating, Trump was close behind, with 33 percent of those polled rating the president’s performance as “excellent” or “good.” About 66 percent said the president was doing “fair” or “poor.”
The results of the poll — which had a margin of error of 4.3 percentage points — led the Cuomo administration to break its usual habit of not commenting on surveys.
“Siena doesn’t always get it right, and color us skeptical,” said Rich Azzopardi, a senior adviser to Cuomo, noting the declines in Schumer and Gillibrand’s approval ratings. “We’ve had the most productive month in history that finally saw the passage of popular, long-stalled legislation and we’re going to continue to move New York forward.”
Indeed, the poll — conducted between Feb. 4 and Feb. 7 — came on the heels of the passage of a raft of progressive legislation that Democrats had long desired, including stricter gun laws, increased voting rights and expanded abortion rights. (The New York Assembly and Senate — both now controlled by Democrats — have slightly better favorable than unfavorable ratings.)
And while the bills addressing those issues were shown to be popular by the Siena poll — each had more support than disapproval — there were indications that the legislation may have upset certain voters and hurt Cuomo: Catholics, for instance, who oppose abortion rights, had an unfavorable opinion of Cuomo (53 percent), although he also fared similarly among Jewish and Protestant voters.
Self-described liberals continued to have a strong opinion of the governor (62 percent) as did African-American voters (71 percent) and Latino voters (63 percent). But his ratings fell with Democrats, Republicans and independents, according to Siena.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.