A majority of New York City voters believe Mayor Eric Adams broke the law and should resign from office after being indicted on bribery and corruption charges, according to a new survey from The New York Times and Siena College that showed a dangerous erosion in his political standing.
The poll found that 53 percent of registered voters think Mr. Adams, a Democrat, should step down, while 40 percent favor him serving out the remaining 14 months of his term.
Even fewer, just 26 percent of voters, said they approved of the job he was doing as mayor. And in a hypothetical primary next year, registered Democrats put Mr. Adams in third place behind former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Letitia James, the state attorney general.
The findings come as Mr. Adams resists calls to resign while he begins to prepare for a potential trial in early spring and a challenging primary next June. He pleaded not guilty last month to charges that he had accepted luxury travel perks and illegal campaign donations from Turkey in exchange for political favors.
[Kamala Harris’s standing in New York City represents a major decline in Democratic support since 2020, Nate Cohn writes.]
Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York and top Democratic leaders have agreed to give him a chance to try to stabilize his administration and reassure the city. But many voters said the city could not afford to wait, particularly at a time when federal prosecutors have warned they could bring additional charges.
“He should step aside,” said Maria Fuentes, 67, a retired property manager, and a Democrat, from Manhattan. “You can’t trust him. Who else is he taking bribes from that we don’t know about?”
“My grandmother used to always say, ‘Show me who you walk with, and I’ll show you who you are,’” she added. “And he’s walking with a lot of people who are under investigation.”
The poll did find some potential slivers of good news for Mr. Adams. Earlier surveys that had been conducted closer to his September indictment showed more substantial majorities of New Yorkers in favor of his resignation.
Mr. Adams has retained the support of an electorally significant bloc: Black voters. Only 38 percent of Black voters said they thought he had done something illegal, and 52 percent of them said he should not resign.
“It is very serious to me, but I want it to be treated the same way they treated Trump,” said Kenneth Providence, a city bus driver from Manhattan who is Black, comparing Mr. Adams’s indictment to the former president’s criminal cases.
“You’ve got the white man who does the same thing,” he said. “The Black man does it, he’s held to a whole ’nother standard. That’s the problem I’m having.”
Overall, New Yorkers have taken a grim view of the state of the city on the eve of a major national election, and, in some cases, may be newly open to supporting Republicans.
About half said that the city was headed in the wrong direction; just 35 percent said it was on the right track.
Roughly two weeks before Election Day, Mr. Trump has made gains in New York City, his hometown, where he was widely repudiated in the last two presidential elections.
Vice President Kamala Harris still leads Mr. Trump 66 percent to 27 percent among likely voters in the upcoming presidential election. But results showed her running about 10 percentage points behind President Biden’s numbers in 2020, suggesting some Democratic erosion in American’s largest city.
Mr. Trump, a Republican, is particularly strong with men, 33 percent of whom support him, and Hispanic voters, mirroring his growth in popularity among those key groups in national polls.
Mr. Trump still has little shot of winning New York’s 28 electoral votes, but his modest gains could be a good sign for Republican House candidates in key New York swing races.
Mr. Trump recently visited a barbershop in the Bronx and is scheduled to hold a rally at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan on Sunday. It is unusual for a major party candidate to take time away from the swing states so late in the campaign, but the city provides a useful backdrop for two of the key themes of his campaign: the crime rate and immigration.
Forty-eight percent of New York City’s registered voters view crime as “out of control,” while 39 percent said it was a major problem, but not out of control; just 12 percent said crime was not a problem.
New Yorkers had more mixed views on the influx of 210,000 migrants who have arrived in the city in the last few years, often in need of city services. Slightly more — 46 percent — said that migrants resettling in New York had been a benefit to the city than the 39 percent who said they were a burden.
Concerns about crime and immigration topped the list of what New York voters said were the most important problems facing the city, at 27 percent and 19 percent, followed closely by the 15 percent who mentioned the cost of living and poverty and the 13 percent who said rising housing prices were the most important issue.
When it came to the mayor, most New Yorkers said they knew at least something about Mr. Adams’s criminal case, and 76 percent of voters said they believed he had done something either illegal or unethical.
Voters are less certain about whether Ms. Hochul should remove Mr. Adams from office: 47 percent said she should, while 43 percent said the governor should not intercede.
The Times/Siena poll did not ask about a hypothetical special election, which would be triggered if Mr. Adams were to resign.
But other Democrats appear to be in much stronger standing among voters ahead of next year’s regularly scheduled primary. Given New York City’s overall Democratic tilt, that contest has typically produced the candidate favored to win the general election.
In this case, Mr. Cuomo and Ms. James, two candidates exploring a potential run, would likely be the early front-runners, with 22 percent and 19 percent of the primary vote. Mr. Adams was the choice of 12 percent of registered Democrats.
Jumaane D. Williams, the city’s public advocate and another potential candidate, received the support of 6 percent of Democratic voters. The Democratic candidates who had already entered the race at the time of the poll — including the city comptroller Brad Lander; his predecessor, Scott M. Stringer; and State Senators Jessica Ramos and Zellnor Myrie — each received 4 percent or less. More than a quarter of Democrats said that they were undecided.
A contest between Ms. James and Mr. Cuomo would be particularly contentious. Her office produced an investigative report in 2021 concluding that Mr. Cuomo had sexually harassed nearly a dozen women while he was governor. It helped force Mr. Cuomo to resign, after a decade in office.
Three years later, both Ms. James and Mr. Cuomo are viewed favorably by a majority of New York City voters and registered Democrats, though her numbers are stronger within the party.
Overall, 51 percent of voters — including 67 percent of Democrats — view the attorney general either very or somewhat favorably. And 52 percent of voters — and 58 percent of Democrats — viewed Mr. Cuomo favorably. About 36 percent of Democratic voters viewed Mr. Cuomo unfavorably, which may work against him under the city’s relatively new ranked-choice voting system.
By way of comparison, just 30 percent of voters and 32 percent of Democrats viewed Mr. Adams favorably, and 62 percent viewed him unfavorably.
How This Poll Was Conducted
Here are the key things to know about this poll from The New York Times and Siena College:
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Interviewers spoke with 853 voters in New York City from Oct. 20 to 23, 2024.
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Times/Siena polls are conducted by telephone, using live interviewers, in both English and Spanish. Overall, more than 98 percent of respondents were contacted on a cellphone for this poll. You can see the exact questions that were asked and the order in which they were asked here.
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Voters are selected for the survey from a list of registered voters. The list contains information on the demographic characteristics of every registered voter, allowing us to make sure we reach the right number of voters of each party, race and region. For this poll, interviewers placed nearly 90,000 calls to more than 38,000 voters.
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To further ensure that the results reflect the entire voting population, not just those willing to take a poll, we give more weight to respondents from demographic groups that are underrepresented among survey respondents, like people without a college degree. You can see more information about the characteristics of our respondents and the weighted sample at the bottom of the results and methodology page, under “Composition of the Sample.”
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The margin of sampling error among registered voters is about plus or minus 3.9 percentage points. In theory, this means that the results should reflect the views of the overall population most of the time, though many other challenges create additional sources of error. When the difference between two values is computed — such as a candidate’s lead in a race — the margin of error is twice as large.
You can see full results and a detailed methodology here. If you want to read more about how and why the Times/Siena Poll is conducted, you can see answers to frequently asked questions and submit your own questions here.
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