Racial Divide Weighs On De Blasio’s Approval Rating, Poll Finds

By Meenal Vamburkar, Bloomberg News (TNS)

NEW YORK — More New York City voters approve of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s job performance than Mayor Bill de Blasio’s, with a stubborn racial divide dragging down the mayor’s numbers, a poll found.

Cuomo’s approval stood at 71 percent, compared with 49 percent for de Blasio, according to a poll released Friday by Quinnipiac University. Views of de Blasio’s performance were racially divided, with 78 percent of blacks and 54 percent of Hispanics approving, and 57 percent of whites disapproving.

“The mayor can’t seem to shake that racial ‘tale of two cities’ that characterizes his administration,” Maurice Carroll, the university’s assistant poll director, said in a statement.

De Blasio, 53, has been caught up in racially charged controversy over of the police killing of an unarmed black man in Staten Island last year and has been criticized for appearing with the Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil-rights activist. Cuomo, 57, also a Democrat, who began this second term as the state’s chief executive this month, hasn’t played a central role in the debate.

The mayor has said he’s devoted his administration to helping poor and struggling families get affordable housing, jobs and city services. He campaigned with commercials featuring his interracial family and swept almost every ethnic demographic in his 2013 election, with black support at 96 percent.

De Blasio’s approval rating has averaged 49 percent since June, the first month Quinnipiac measured it, which was six months into his first term. He had 53 percent approval that month, the highest he’s scored in that seven-month span. His lowest rating of 47 percent came in a Dec. 18 survey.

The survey consisted of telephone interviews with 1,182 registered voters from Jan. 7 to Jan. 14. It has a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points, according to Hamden, Connecticut-based Quinnipiac.

(With assistance from Henry Goldman in New York.)

AFP Photo/Emmanuel Dunand