The latest Siena College Research Institute poll (pdf) released on Monday, June 10, reveals that Donald Trump is more favored in his home state New York than New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
It’s not that Trump has become popular overnight in the predominantly blue state; only 34 percent of registered voters have a favorable opinion of him, and 63 percent questioned filled in they have an unfavorable view. But, actually, the only one to compete with him for the position of least appreciated candidate for the 2020 presidency is de Blasio, who scored just 29 percent of the voters having a favorable view of him, compared to 53 percent who view him unfavorably.
Even among the registered Democratic voters in New York, de Blasio polled at 45 percent unfavorable voters, compared to 39 percent favorable. In a similar poll in January, de Blasio scored 38 percent favorable and 46 percent unfavorable—a gap of 8 percent, that has tripled since.
“He is underwater with Democrats. He’s also well underwater with New York City voters,” Steven Greenberg, a spokesperson for Siena Institute said, according to The New York Times. He added the results were “horrible” for the Democratic candidate.
De Blasio’s popularity has steadily been going down since he announced his run for president, beginning this year hitting an all-time low with this latest poll and last Friday in the CNN-Des Moines Register poll (pdf) of Iowa voters in which he obtained exactly zero individuals for support among the 600 respondents.
De Blasio and Mayor Wayne Messam of Miramar, Florida, were the only two candidates among the 23 competing Democratic presidential candidates that did not gain a single first or second preference vote by any of the ones polled.
”There’s always been a question mark as to how many (candidates) can get any real traction,” said J. Ann Selzer, the president of Selzer & Co., which conducted the survey. “And we gave them every opportunity to show that they have some kind of constituency here. But there’s a fair number who, their constituency just isn’t very big,” The Hill reported.
However, de Blasio said that he does not worry about bad polling results. The only thing that matters is the final score when voters cast their votes.
“I’ll tell you something, Iowans have consistently surprised the pundits and come out many, many times with a choice that was not expected,” de Blasio said hopefully on CNN.
“It’s a poll of 600 Iowans, eight months before the caucuses. This is just the beginning of a very long process,” he said.
“I wonder if being New York City mayor might actually hurt you in a place like Iowa,” CNN’s Ana Cabrera asked.
“It’s a fair concern,” de Blasio said. “I’m hearing from rural Iowans the same issues I hear from my constituents in New York.”
