71 percent say Cuomo should be impeached if probe finds he hid nursing home deaths

A large majority of voters say New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) should be impeached if it is found that he concealed deaths in nursing homes amid the coronavirus pandemic last year, according to a new poll released exclusively to The Hill on Monday.

Seventy-one percent of respondents in a Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey said they believed Cuomo should be impeached if he concealed fatalities, while 29 percent said he should not.

The same survey found that 71 percent of respondents believe Cuomo did conceal the nursing home data pertaining to coronavirus deaths, while 29 percent said they did not believe he concealed the data.

The scrutiny over Cuomo’s handling of the situation in nursing homes intensified last month when a top aide revealed that state officials “froze” providing information about the deaths after questions from the Department of Justice last year.

Reports subsequently surfaced that the FBI and federal prosecutors in Brooklyn were investing Cuomo’s coronavirus task force.

Additionally, Cuomo is now facing allegations of sexual misconduct from two women who previously worked for him. The governor said in a statement on Sunday that he “may have been insensitive or too personal” and that he would cooperate with an investigation from the state’s attorney general.

The developments provide a stark contrast to nearly a year ago, when Cuomo was seen as one of the most popular governors and received praise for his handling of the pandemic and daily televised COVID-19 briefings.

The same Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey shows his popularity slipping. Only 31 percent of respondents said they have a favorable view of Cuomo, while 42 percent said they had an unfavorable view of him.

And Cuomo is not the only governor facing low favorability ratings, according to the poll. Twenty-four percent of respondents said they had a favorable view of California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), while 30 percent said they had an unfavorable view.

Newsom has faced some backlash recently for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, including multiple statewide lockdowns.

“Both governor Gavin Newsom and Andrew Cuomo are in real trouble and have lost their rising star status,” said Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll polling director Mark Penn.

The Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey of 2,006 registered voters was conducted from Feb. 23 to 25. It is a collaboration of the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University and The Harris Poll.

Full poll results will be posted online later this week. The survey is an online sample drawn from the Harris Panel and weighted to reflect known demographics. As a representative online sample, it does not report a probability confidence interval.