As Eric Adams enters the fifth month of his tenure as New York City mayor, it appears the honeymoon phase might finally be over.
A new Quinnipiac University poll shows Adams holding a 43 percent approval rating among registered voters, with 37 percent of voters voicing their disapproval. The poll surveyed 1,249 registered city voters from April 28 to May 2. During the university’s last poll back in February, Adams had a 46 percent approval rate to 27 percent disapproving.
Public safety was a major platform of Adams’s campaign as he ran for office. But only 37 percent of voters said that they approved of the mayor’s handling of crime with 54 percent disapproving, a decrease from 49 percent in February. Similarly, only 49 percent of voters approved of Adams’s handling of police and community relations.
Crime is also the top issue on the mind of New York City voters: 49 percent of voters answered that crime was the most urgent issue facing the city right now, followed by affordable housing at 15 percent and homelessness at 12 percent.
In the wake of a shooting in a Sunset Park subway station last month, Adams expressed support for adding some type of metal detector within the subway system to aid in the search for weapons. Sixty-two percent of voters agree with Adams and believe adding this technology is a good idea, while 35 percent think it’s a bad idea.
When asked about decreasing gun violence in the city, 53 percent of voters said they felt either “not so confident” or “not confident at all” that Adams would be able to do so. Only 8 percent said they felt “very confident” that Adams could decrease gun violence, while 35 percent said they felt “somewhat confident.”
Adams received his highest marks on the handling of COVID-19 and the pandemic, receiving a 53 percent approval rating. Forty-one percent of voters are somewhat confident and 25 percent are very confident that the city’s economy will recover from the pandemic.
