New Yorkers Really Don’t Like Adams, Hochul Because of Crime
More than three-quarters of New Yorkers say they personally worry about becoming a victim of violent crime, and they’re taking those fears out on the mayor and the governor, according to a survey of city residents released Tuesday.
Spectrum News NY1 and Siena College reported in their new poll that 76 percent of the city’s residents say they were either “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” about being a victim of violent crime. Fifty-six percent say the city is headed in the wrong direction, and they give poor marks to the man who ran on cleaning it up. Just 29 percent approve of how Eric Adams is doing his job with 64 percent saying they disapprove. Only 16 percent of residents say he’s doing a “good” job handling crime. His approval rating has been cut in half since a similar Siena poll in January pegged him at 63 percent favorability.
Meanwhile, Governor Kathy Hochul stands at 35 percent approval in the city and 54 percent disapproval compared to 45 percent approval among state voters in March, according to a Siena poll. Today, 46 percent of respondents say the state is headed in the wrong direction under her watch, a potentially forbidding figure as she faces a test in the Democratic primary in three weeks against Representative Tom Suozzi, who’s been assailing her over crime from the right, and the city’s public advocate, Jumaane Williams, who has criticized her from the left.
There has been some criticism of how Siena conducted the poll, which asked respondents to grade the job officials are doing as excellent, good, fair, or poor. “Fair” qualified as disapproval, which Adams’s press secretary pushed back against on Twitter, saying the poll “actually says almost 2/3 of New Yorkers stand with” Adams.
Residents were surveyed at the end of May, which saw a 27.8 percent uptick in crime over the same period last year, according to the NYPD. While police reported shootings were down year over year, May saw another string of high-profile killings that have unnerved city residents, including the death of an 11-year-old girl who was shot by a 15-year-old in the Bronx and the killing of a Goldman Sachs executive on a subway train.
One area of good news for Adams is residents expressed support for several of his proposals to fight crime, with 63 percent saying they favor his idea of installing machines at subway entrances that could detect weapons and 85 percent approving of his proposal to put more police on patrol in the subway system.