Facing questions about his fundraising while seeing his top child welfare official step down, Mayor de Blasio yesterday should have been having a bad case of the Mondays. But his latest poll numbers might be giving him a reason to keep chugging along.
The NY1-Baruch College City Poll shows that while de Blasio isn’t about to get a ticker-tape parade from New Yorkers, they like him. Well, sort of.
Fifty-one percent approve of his job performance while 36 disapprove. Those are decent numbers to hold going into a Democratic primary and a general election next year. Black and Latino voters – a strong portion of the primary electorate – give the mayor much higher marks than white voters who harbor more negative feelings toward the mayor -- with just 42 percent approving and 47 percent disapproving.
The other statistic that de Blasio’s team is keeping in their pocket is the fact that 73 percent of New Yorkers say they are very or somewhat satisfied with city services. The number is far tighter when people are asked if New York is going in the right direction with 46 percent saying yes and 42 percent saying it’s on the wrong track.
The final bit of odd news in the first batch of results from the poll is that a third of New Yorkers think crime has gone up during de Blasio’s time in office – when it’s actually gone down slightly or stayed about the same depending on which numbers you’re looking at. Perception, though, is a powerful thing and it’s important for the mayor to remember that just because you tell or show people something, it doesn’t mean they’ll believe it.
And speaking of the master of perception over reality, today we’ll be looking at Donald Trump’s numbers in New York City. We’ll release the results on “Inside City Hall” and 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. and talk with our pollsters, Mickey Blum and Doug Muzzio.
Bob Hardt