Two years before the next mayor’s race in New York City, Mayor de Blasio has lost support among his base of black and Latino voters and for his efforts to curb the NYPD’s polarizing stop-and-frisk practices, a stand that helped to sweep the Democrat into office, according to a Wall Street Journal/NBC 4 New York/Marist Poll released Tuesday.
Thirty-eight percent of registered voters approve of his performance in office, down from 44 percent in May, the poll found. The drop was most pronounced in Manhattan, where 32 percent like what the mayor is doing, compared with 53 percent earlier.
Black and Latino voters continue to rate him more highly that white New Yorkers, with 50 percent of black voters and 37 percent of Latinos giving him good marks, compared with 32 percent of whites. But de Blasio had previously gotten a 59 percent approval rating among black voters and 49 percent among Latinos.
“Clearly we see some of that enthusiasm which was there when he racked up a huge victory has faded,” said Lee Miringoff, the director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion in Poughkeepsie.
De Blasio won 73 percent of the vote when he defeated Republican Joe Lhota two years ago, and one result is likely a let down that more has not improved for city residents, Miringoff said.
“You end up with this kind of disappointment and erosion in your approval rating and I think that’s what we’re seeing right now,” he said.
In response, de Blasio's press secretary, Karen Hinton said in an email: “Polls are a lot like cotton candy. They evaporate fairly quickly after consumption. The truth is quality of life has rarely been better in NYC. Crime is near historic lows. Jobs are up. The tourist economy is booming. We are building more and more affordable housing. Over 65,000 children are enrolled in pre-K. All on Mayor de Blasio’s watch.”
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Among those surveyed, De Blasio has lost ground on his handling of crime, with a majority of adults, 51 percent, disapproving of his approach. In May, residents were divided, 47 percent to 46 percent.
Specifically on stop and frisk, a signature issue for de Blasio, 38 percent of residents say he should continue to reduce its use. But 36 percent say the city should revert to the policy in place under the previous mayor, Michael Bloomberg. That includes 24 percent of black voters and 31 percent of Latinos.
“This is I think a really astounding number in this poll to reflect just what has happened to the mayor,” Miringoff said.
Nestor Saunders, an African-American 62-year-old chef who lives in the Bronx, said he thought police officers should be allowed to frisk people they believed were behaving suspiciously. Saunders, who participated in the poll, said that the problems facing the city, a lack of affordable housing in particular, took many years to develop.
“It will take a little time for it to be solved,” Saunders said.
Another Bronx resident, Glenn Aaron, a 58-year-old U.S. postal worker who also participated in the poll, said he continued to oppose stop and frisk as a policy. Aaron, who is African American, said he did not believe stop and frisk was applied fairly across nationality, race and ethnicity.
Sixty-six percent of residents had confidence in the police to protect them from violent crime, up from 60 percent in the spring. The numbers differ by race and ethnicity, with whites the mostly likely to believe police would protect them at 82 percent, black residents at 59 percent and Latinos at 50 percent. The proportion of black voters rose from 49 percent.
As far as how well the city is faring, 38 percent of voters said they thought the city was moving in the right direction, while 55 percent said it was heading in the wrong one.
Forty-one percent of New York City residents said they thought the overall quality of life had gotten worse in the last year, compared with 16 percent who thought it had gotten better. Whites were more likely than black residents or Latinos to think conditions had deteriorated. Forty-two percent of residents thought the number of homeless and mentally ill people and panhandlers had increased since de Blasio became mayor compared with another 42 percent who thought it had remained the same. Sixty percent of adults thought the subways were not cleaner and nearly six in 10 supported a proposal to restrict costumed panhandlers in Times Square to designated areas.
De Blasio got good marks for working hard and understanding the problems facing the city — 60 and 59 percent of voters, respectively.
Miringoff noted that de Blasio’s predecessors, Bloomberg and Rudy Giuliani, both had similar approval ratings at the same point in their terms, 40 percent for Bloomberg and 35 percent for Giuliani. But they were Republicans in a city that is mostly Democratic and de Blasio was elected with a landslide.
“So the erosion is much more significant to bring him down to that level,” Miringoff said.
The survey of 926 adults in New York City was conducted from Oct. 25 through Oct. 29 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percent points. There are 650 registered voters among those questioned, and the margin of error for them is 3.8 percentage points.
