Eric Adams' Approval Rating Plummets to 28%, Lowest Ever for a NYC Mayor

Eric Adams has lost the support of the majority of voters from both major political parties, according to a new poll by Quinnipiac University.

Published on Wednesday, the poll asked New York voters about their approval of the city’s mayor at the end of his second year in office, as well as a slew of more specific questions about aspects of Adams’ politics, administration, and even personality.

The poll found that just 28% of New York voters approve of the job Adams is doing as mayor and 58% actively disapprove of his administrations. Another 14% said they didn’t know how they felt. By party affiliation, the Democratic mayor had 49% disapproval among his own party and 68% disapproval among Republicans, with 69% disapproval among Independent voters.

Broken down by race, the city’s first Black mayor had his largest bastion of support among the city’s Black community, which is about one-fifth of the city’s population. Forty-eight percent of Black voters support Adams and 38% disapprove - the only demographic where his approval rating was higher than disapproval.

"There's no good news for Mayor Adams in this poll,” said Quinnipiac University Poll Assistant Director Mary Snow.

“Not only are voters giving him poor grades on the job he's doing at City Hall, their views on his character have dimmed. As the city faces across the board budget cuts while dealing with a migrant crisis, headlines about a federal investigation into the mayor's 2021 campaign and an accusation of sexual assault leveled against him from 30 years ago are taking a toll," she said.

Adams’ low rating is the worst-ever for a mayor of the Big Apple, eclipsing Michael Bloomberg’s dismal 31% rating in July 2003.

Fabien Levy, the deputy mayor of communications for Adams’ office, told the media on Wednesday that the poll was “incorrect.”

“The real numbers cannot be questioned: Crime is down, jobs are up, and we continue to deliver billions of dollars into the pockets of working people,” Levy said, adding that “There will always be more work to do, but there is no question that this city is in a better place under Mayor Adams’ leadership.”

Notably, the Quinnipiac poll found that very few Gotham residents are likely to agree with that statement, with only 4% saying they were “very satisfied” with “the way things are going in New York City today.”

Although he’s only been in office for two years, Adams’ administration has been beset by crises and scandals that have alienated him from both liberals and conservatives. The poll reflected this dissatisfaction in its breakdown by issue, with 66% of voters saying they disapproved of his vast budget cuts that have impacted numerous other areas, such as public schools, where 53% disapproved of Adams’ work; homelessness, of which 72% disapprove of Adams’ policies; and crime, of which 60% of voters are unhappy with his handling.

Two-thirds of voters also said they disapproved of his handling of the migrant crisis, which is a crisis in many US border cities and ports, but which has been fanned by the deportation of migrants to NYC by Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Adams has blamed the Democratic Joe Biden administration for failing to provide NYC with adequate funding to handle the crisis, which has clogged up the city’s programs to house and find employment for migrant arrivals.

In addition, Adams has alienated voters with his front-facing evangelical Christian rhetoric, an FBI investigation into whether or not he illegally received cash from the Turkish government, and recent accusations of sexual assault made against him by a former Transit Police Department colleague.

Adams has denied the accusation, and no charges have been levied against him as of yet.

"The mayor does not know who this person is. If they ever met, he doesn’t recall it. But he would never do anything to physically harm another person and vigorously denies any such claim," a City Hall spokesperson told US media recently.

Adams was elected in 2021 and will be up for re-election in 2025.

The poll was conducted between November 30 and December 4 in all five city boroughs, surveying 1,297 self-identified registered voters with a margin of sampling error of +/- 2.7 percentage points.