Cuomo’s approval rating remains steady despite controversy over nursing home deaths: poll

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s (D) approval rating in his state has not suffered despite revelations that he undercounted the number of COVID-19 deaths among nursing home residents.

According to a new Siena College Research Institute poll released Tuesday, Cuomo’s overall favorability rating stands at 56 percent among registered voters, with 39 percent having an unfavorable opinion of him. That’s a negligible change from January, when his approval rating sat at 57 percent to 39 percent. 

When asked specifically about his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, 61 percent of voters approve of the job he’s doing, only a marginal drop from the 63 percent who said the same thing last month. 

The results were unsurprisingly split along partisan lines, with 83 percent of Democrats approving of his handling of the virus, compared with 52 percent of independents and 25 percent of Republicans.

“While Cuomo remains popular and gets strong ratings across the board from Democrats, independents are closely divided on their feelings toward Cuomo. Republicans, who had shown Cuomo some love early in the pandemic last spring, are now overwhelmingly negative in their views on Cuomo,” said Siena College pollster Steven Greenberg. 

Overall, the survey found that 46 percent of voters said they’d like to reelect Cuomo when he’s up next year, while 45 percent said they wanted “someone else.” That’s slightly down from the 48 percent in January who wanted him to win another term.

The poll was conducted Feb. 7-11, which was after the state attorney general released a report on the undercount but before a New York Post story was released investigating Cuomo’s resistance to publicizing the nursing home death figures. 

Cuomo this week apologized for not putting a premium on publicizing the extent of the spread of the coronavirus in New York’s nursing homes. 

The Siena poll surveyed 804 registered voters last week and has a margin of error of 4.3 percentage points.