Marist poll: Cuomo performance rating hits new low

ALBANY – Gov. Andrew Cuomo's job-performance rating fell to 37 percent, the lowest point since he became governor in 2011, a poll today said.

Cuomo, who was re-elected last fall, had his approval rating dip seven percentage points since last October, the poll from The Wall Street Journal/NBC 4 New York/Marist College found. Cuomo's job-performance rating hit a high of 59 percent in October 2012.

"Elected officials with an Albany, N.Y., working address are struggling," Lee Miringoff, the Marist College pollster, said, in a statement. "For Gov. Andrew Cuomo, how low is low? His predecessors' low points included 17 percent for David Paterson, 30 percent for Eliot Spitzer, 34 percent for George Pataki, and 32 percent for Mario Cuomo."

Cuomo has faced a tumultuous second term. The leaders of the Senate and Assembly have been arrested on corruption charges, and federal prosecutors are still eying his office over the Democratic governor's decision a year ago to disband a corruption-busting panel.

The Poughkeepsie-based Marist poll showed that Cuomo had lost ground, in particular, with Democrats and voters in New York City. With Democrats, 43 percent of voters approved of the job Cuomo was doing, down from 56 percent last fall.

In New York City, which has a heavy Democratic enrollment edge, voters had the sharpest drop in their views on Cuomo, who lives in New Castle, Westchester County. His rating fell from 53 percent to 44 percent since October.

In upstate, his job-performance rating was even lower: 31 percent approved of the job he was doing, compared to 67 percent who thought he was doing "fair" or "poor." In the New York City suburbs, Cuomo's job rating was 41 percent positive.

The decline, Marist said, was in part due to the widespread opinion that Albany is corrupt: three in four voters statewide said corruption at the Capitol has increased in recent years.

The opinion was evident in voters' views of the state Legislature: Only 20 percent of voters approved of the job the Assembly was doing, and 23 percent approved of the job of the state Senate. Both ratings were a decline from last fall, Marist said.

Overall, 51 percent of voters believed New York was moving in the wrong direction compared to 43 percent who said the state was headed in the right direction. That's the lowest ratio since May 2011, Marist said.

Cuomo has touted the successes in New York during his tenure: The unemployment rate is down; the state's credit ratings are the highest in 40 years; income taxes have been cut for businesses and individuals; and property taxes have been capped.

"It was a period of historic progress, and it has made our state a better state," Cuomo said in his State of the State address Jan. 21.

The poll of 712 New York adults was conducted May 4-5. It had a margin of error of 3.7 percentage points.

Jspector@gannett.com; www.twitter.com/gannettalbany