Poll: Bill De Blasio's Approval Rating Drops Eight Points Since January

A new poll released by the Quinnipiac Polling Institute finds that New Yorkers continue to sour on Mayor Bill de Blasio, with the mayor’s approval rating dropping from 53% to 45% since his first poll results in January.

Quinnipiac’s new poll finds that Mayor de Blasio has a 45% approval rating, with 34% disapproving of the work he is doing in office. The mayor is significantly less popular than his police chief, Bill Bratton, and City Controller Scott Stringer. He is also much less popular than he was two months ago and than Mayor Michael Bloomberg at about the same point in his mayoral career. Bloomberg received a 62% approval rating in March 2002, about three months into office–17 percentage points higher than de Blasio’s current approval rating.

New Yorkers appear especially displeased with the way Mayor de Blasio is handling taxes, giving him a 44% approval rating on his performance there. Quinnipiac University Poll Assistant Director Maurice Carroll described the numbers as “so-so” and de Blasio’s overall performance as mayor as “uneven.” 

“He’s had a rough time,” Carroll noted.

The Quinnipiac poll is the second major poll of its kind of the fledgling de Blasio administration. Earlier this month, Marist University released a poll that found that 57% of New Yorkers would describe Mayor de Blasio’s work as either “fair” or “poor”–a majority found his work less than “good.” The number is especially significant given that de Blasio won almost 75% of the vote to take office.

Mayor de Blasio’s tenure has featured a number of very public stumbles, from his handling of multiple major snowstorms–he outraged parents by keeping schools open during a blizzard–to his war on charter schools. The mayor denied public space to three of the city’s most successful charter schools that Mayor Bloomberg had already allotted for them, sparking a wave of protests that even featured an impassioned anti-de Blasio speech from fellow Democrat New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Mayor de Blasio has also managed to alienate much of the left despite his far-left tendencies. Opponents of charter schools have sued the city for de Blasio not working even faster to shut them down. A collection of powerful unions sent de Blasio a letter demanding he walk back his campaign to ban horse-drawn carriages in New York City, arguing that the move would toss a significant number of union members into unemployment and end an industry that provides well-paying, middle-class jobs.

The New York Times has mostly avoided coverage of the mayor’s early crises, instead opting to highlight his cameo appearance on a television show and run a feature on how tall he is.

Read the full results of the Quinnipiac poll here.