NEW YORK — New Yorkers have soured slightly on Mayor Eric Adams’ job performance over the past month amid continuing migrant and housing crises in the city, according to a new poll.
The survey from Siena College, conducted between June 20 and June 25, found that 46% of New York City residents hold a favorable view of Adams’ performance in office, while 39% hold an unfavorable view.
That compares to the 49% favorability rating he scored in a similar analysis conducted by Siena pollsters in mid-May. That poll put his unfavourability at 35%, meaning that unflattering metric has trended in the wrong direction for the mayor in the past month, too.
The latest poll registered a more dramatic drop in Adams’ popularity among Black voters statewide.
Just 29% of African American voters surveyed gave Adams the thumbs up, while 50% said they hold an unfavorable view of him. In a sharp contrast, Black voters gave the moderate Democrat mayor a 59%-16% approval-disapproval index in the mid-May survey.
Despite the popularity plunges, Adams political adviser Evan Thies touted the latest Siena results as a boon to the mayor.
“As Mayor Adams tackles unprecedented challenges while reducing crime and improving quality of life, this poll and others show consistently that New York City residents support the mayor and his policies,” Thies said in a statement.
Thies also poured cold water on the sharp drop-off in support from Black residents.
“It is not a credible number considering the fact that the same polling organization showed the reverse result just one month ago and the mayor’s historic support from the African American community,” he said.
On a statewide level, Adams’ favorability ratings are looking bleak. The poll found that just 28% of New Yorkers statewide favor his job performance, while 38% disapprove.
The new Siena poll comes as Adams continues to battle multiple crises in the city. Nearly 50,000 mostly Latin American asylum seekers are believed to still be living in local shelters and emergency hotels, costing the city millions of dollars per day and putting intense strain on municipal resources.
A lack of affordable housing in the city, meantime, remains a persistent problem, and the mayor has faced criticism from the Democratic Party’s left-wing for not doing enough to help homeless New Yorkers transition out of shelters.
An issue that New Yorkers surveyed by Siena gave Adams a net positive rating on is his efforts to relocate migrants who’ve arrived in the city to other parts of the state.
According to the new poll, 51% of city residents support those efforts, while 36% oppose them.
At a recent briefing, Deputy Mayor of Health and Human Services Anne Williams-Isom said only about 1% of the tens of thousands of migrants who’ve arrived in the city have been successfully relocated to other parts of New York.
