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Poll: Hochul still underwater with voters

But New Yorkers approve of her 2025 priorities

Gov. Kathy Hochul is still polling underwater with New York voters, but her proposals for this year’s legislative session are getting positive marks from the same people.

On Monday, the Siena College Research Institute unveiled its latest statewide poll, finding that 47% of voters have a negative view of the governor, compared to 39% with a positive view of her overall.

“Governor Hochul’s favorability and job approval ratings continue to languish in negative territory,” said Steven Greenberg, pollster for SCRI. “Currently 57% of voters — including 41% of Democrats — would prefer ‘someone else’ as their next governor. Only 22% think her administration has improved the state’s fiscal condition over the last year, compared to 52% — including a small plurality of Democrats — who say she hasn’t.”

This marks a full year of negative poll ratings for Hochul — SCRI is the only institution conducting regular polls of New York voters on statewide issues, and they’ve tracked a steady decline to her current negative approval ratings that has seemed to level out.

“Her favorability has never once hit 50% in a state where 49% of voters are Democrats,” Greenberg said. “Never once have a majority of voters viewed Hochul favorably, and at present, only 55% of Democrats view her favorably.”

But voters don’t have the same opinion of the governor’s priorities — at least the one’s she’s announced and pushed for this year. The SCRI team pulled out 10 key proposals from the governor’s executive budget and State of the State plans this year, and all 10 got support from more than 50% of the voters polled — most are even popular with a majority or plurality of Republican voters.

A whopping 77% of voters are behind her plan to make school breakfast and lunch free across the state public school system, including 62% of Republicans and 75% of independents. About 71% of people said they support her rollout of more police in the NYC subway system overnight, and another 63% support her move to boost the state child tax credit for families — including 53% of Republicans and 56% of independents.

Restricting smartphone use in schools, issuing “inflation refund checks,” spending $1 billion on an income tax cut, and expanding the power of the state to send mentally ill people to a mental hospital without their consent all carry support from a majority of voters and a majority each of Democrats, Republicans and independents.

While a larger proportion of state voters support the governor’s plan to invest $1 billion into climate change and resiliency efforts, and her proposal to prohibit hedge funds from buying single-family homes in the first 75 days of their presence on the market, than oppose them, neither proposal got the support of a full 50% of the polled voters.

The climate change investment only has majority support from registered Democrats: Republicans oppose it by 67% and independents oppose it by 39%. The ban on hedge funds purchasing homes has more support than opposition from all three groups as well, but only gets a true majority with Democrats, where 57% support the move.

“A potentially hopeful sign for Hochul is that if she successfully gets her proposals adopted — a big ‘if’ over the coming months — voters say, 42%-26%, that it would improve the lives of everyday New Yorkers,” Greenberg said. “To be clear, Democrats strongly thing it would improve New Yorker’s lives, while a large plurality of Republicans and a small plurality of independents do no think passing her proposals would improve lives.”

On other issues, the SCRI poll found that a majority of New York’s voting base supports deporting immigrants in the U.S. without documentation if they’ve committed a crime, by 79% to just 11% who don’t support that policy. But on deporting immigrants in the U.S. illegally who haven’t committed any other crimes, 42% oppose it to 39% in support.

That issue is very partisan. While Democrats oppose removing illegal immigrants without a criminal record 59% to 43% who support it, a majority of Republicans and a larger proportion of independents support removals.

And on issues related to the return of President Donald Trump, New Yorkers seem widely opposed to his policies and plans; while Democrats are firmly opposed, independents and Republicans are more willing to say they like his early moves.

“President Trump has not been popular in his former home state for more than a decade. And while that is still true, Trump now has his best favorability rating, 41-56%, since the month before he took office the first time, December 2016, when his favorability rating was 41-53%,” Greenberg said.

His policies are unpopular, with 60% of New York voters disapproving of renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, 49% opposing his tariff plans for Canada and Mexico, and 41% opposing his suggestion of the U.S. retaking the Panama Canal.

One policy that voters seem to support is the administration’s move to eliminate gender identities beyond male and female: 47% of respondents said they support the administration removing protections for transgender, agender or gender nonconforming Americans.

This poll was conducted between Jan. 27 and 30, reaching 803 registered New York voters via landline, cellphone and a web-based panel. The overall margin of error is 4.2% in either direction.

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