(Washington Insider Magazine) – Democratic Mayor Eric Adams is facing a dip in his approval ratings due to a crime boom in NYC, according to a new poll. The majority (63%) also want the thousands of asylum seekers who have filled the shelters to wait for their procedures in other areas of New York state.
Entering 13 months in office, Democratic Mayor Eric Adams is facing an approval dip due to NYC’s crime boom, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll.
The same poll showed that the vast majority of those consulted (63%) want the thousands of asylum seekers who arrived in the city since last year and filled the shelters to wait for their procedures in other areas of New York state. Only 31% thought there is room for them in NYC.
The poll also found that voters approve, by a margin of 65% to 26%, a proposal by Adams himself to send some of the immigrants to areas in upstate New York where there are dwindling populations.
Since spring 2022, approximately 43,200 undocumented immigrants have arrived in NYC, 28,200 of whom live in 86 city-funded emergency shelters and processing centers. This week a group of immigrants sparked a massive protest when the mayor insisted on moving them from a hotel in Manhattan to a camp in Brooklyn.
Mayor Adams’ approval rating has dropped to 37%, as New Yorkers continue to express their discontent with the way he handles crime, according to those consulted by Quinnipiac. In contrast, 43% disapproved of their work and 20% chose not to respond.
Last May, the numbers from a similar poll were exactly the opposite: 43% in favor of Adams and 37% against, recalled the New York Post.
Just yesterday the mayor downplayed the numbers when asked about the poll during a press conference at City Hall. “Polls go up and down, up and down. We will just do what we do, and that is produce for New Yorkers,” Adams told reporters, though he added that he had not yet seen the poll in detail.
Adam’s Greatest Support Came From Brooklyn
Adam’s greatest support came from Brooklyn, where he was mayor for eight years, and from The Bronx. Not surprisingly, his weakest numbers were in Staten Island, considered the only county with a Republican majority in NYC.
The latest poll conducted between January 26 and 30 of approximately 1,300 registered voters shows that crime remains the top problem in all five boroughs: 59% of respondents in the Bronx said it is their top concern, followed by 47% in Staten Island and 42% in Queens.
Affordable housing ranked as the city’s second biggest problem and homelessness ranked third.
Since his campaign, Adams has often emphasized that he was an NYPD officer and that may have been successful, but now he could be playing against him. “A law-and-order mayor faces a cold winter of discontent as crime far dwarfs all other voter concerns,” said Tim Malloy, a polling analyst at Quinnipiac University in Hamden. Connecticut.
With housing and funds in short supply, the wait for long-awaited legal status seems long for many: Immigration courts in New York state were already backlogged by 180,000 cases before thousands of immigrants began arriving in 2022.
At least two asylum seekers have died in the past months in city shelters: a Colombian mother in September and a Venezuelan youth in December. Meanwhile, in October Adams declared a “state of emergency” over the immigration crisis in NYC, asking for financial and legislative assistance from the White House and state legislators. “It’s burning our budget,” he said then.
New York City’s “right to refuge” policy does not apply to the tens of thousands of asylum seekers who have arrived, the mayor said last week. In early 2023 Adams traveled to Washington DC and the border at El Paso (Texas) toughening his stance on immigration, which had been lax last year. “There is no more space… but local laws force us here to provide shelter and keep moving in the right direction,” he said. “This has impacted the quality of life in New York.”
He also wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post in mid-January calling on President Joe Biden to close the southern border until immigrants’ asylum claims could be processed and outlining a “decompression” strategy to ease the crisis and settle migrants. the immigrants.
This article is authored by Andrés Correa.