Hochul’s Favorability Rating Higher Than Stefanik’s
By Hank Russell
U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer has seen his popularity fall off a cliff in recent months, with his favorability hitting rock bottom and his unfavorability rating hitting an all-time high.
According to the recently released poll from the Siena Research Institute, Schumer has only a 32% favorable rating — down 10 percentage points from September. It is the lowest since August, when it was 38%. Meanwhile, his unfavorable rating shot up from 45% two months ago to 55% this month. The previous high was 50% in August.
The poll also found that Governor Kathy Hochul’s favorability rating slipped over the past two months, but she held a higher favorability rating than that of U.S. Representative Elise Stefanik.
Hochul’s favorability rating dropped from 45% in September to 43% in November, while her unfavorability rating rose from 42% to 45% during the same time period.
Despite her relative unpopularity, her favorable rating is higher than Stefanik’s (28%). Stefanik (R-Plattsburgh) recently announced she will run against Hochul. In a probable run against Stefanik, she leads the congresswoman 52%-32%.
Democrats were asked who they would vote for in the primary. Fifty-six percent said they would vote for Hochul, while 16% supported her former lieutenant governor Antonio Delgado, while 3% wanted someone else.
On other issues, despite months of deployments and deportations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials, support for President Donald Trump’s immigration policies slipped by three percentage points, with support going from 45% in May to a record-low 42% in November.
On the issue of tariffs, 28% supported them, while 61% opposed them. Sixty-percent of Republicans supported these tariffs, compared to only 34% of independent/third-party voters and 10% of Democrats.
Another issue had to do with “taxing the rich.” Since being elected New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani vowed to follow up on his campaign promise to raise taxes on the city’s top 5% of earners and raise the corporate tax rate on larger businesses. Of those who were polled, respondents supported a tax hike on the rich by a 60%-32% margin and another 60% supported raising taxes on large corporations based in the state, compared to 30% who didn’t. Nearly eight in 10 Democrats supported these tax hike, while approximately half of Republicans opposed them.