Democrats no longer like New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo, or support him remaining in office, according to the latest Economist/YouGov poll.
Cuomo suffered a major loss of popularity two weeks ago in the wake of the revelation that his administration altered reports of deaths from COVID-19 in New York nursing homes. This would soon be followed by allegations of sexual harassment and inappropriate workplace behavior from five former aides. Those charges now dominate discussion of Cuomo as members of his own party call on him to resign.
By more than two to one (48% to 18%), the public believes he should resign, though a third (34%) have no opinion on the question. Even Democrats want the governor to resign, by 37% to 29%, although a narrower margin than among Independents (47% vs 17%) and Republicans (69% vs 8%).
Nationally, it’s hard to find a group that says Cuomo should remain in office. Democrats in the Northeast, Cuomo’s home region, say he should resign by 37% to 26%. Female Democrats narrowly favor resignation (36% to 32%) while nearly twice as many male Democrats want him to leave as believe he should remain in post (40% to 22%).
Last week, while Cuomo’s favorability rating overall was low, Democrats remained favorable (a net favorability of +14). But this week, that changed. Cuomo’s favorable rating among Democrats dropped 12-points this week (48% to 36%), while his unfavorable rating among those in his own party rose, giving him a net unfavorability of -12. Republicans and Independents also lowered their opinion of the governor, though not by as much as Democrats did.
The sexual harassment allegations are now front and center for the public. Half (50%) have heard “a lot” about them, while fewer (41%) have heard “a lot” about the nursing home issue. Sometimes partisans claim to be paying less attention to scandals that concern members of their own party, and last week Democrats were 13-points less likely than Republicans to say they had heard “a lot” about the sexual harassment charges. But this week, majorities of both Democrats (54%) and Republicans (58%) have heard a lot about them.
Related: One in four Americans won’t accept just any COVID-19 vaccine
See the toplines and crosstabs from this Economist/YouGov poll
Methodology: The Economist survey was conducted by YouGov using a nationally representative sample of 1,500 US Adult Citizens interviewed online between March 6 - 9, 2021. This sample was weighted according to gender, age, race, and education based on the American Community Survey, conducted by the US Bureau of the Census, as well as 2016 Presidential vote, registration status, geographic region, and news interest. Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel to be representative of all US citizens. The margin of error is approximately 2.7% for the overall sample
Image: Getty
