Former Vice President Joe Biden leads President Donald Trump 61-29 percent in the Empire State. Biden has a 62-33 favorability rating and Trump has a negative 29-66 percent favorability rating, according to a new Siena College Poll of likely New York State voters released today.

Governor Andrew Cuomo has a 59-33 percent favorability rating, down a little from 65-31 percent in June among registered voters. His job performance rating is 61-38 percent, little changed from June. And by a 73-24 percent margin, voters approve of his job handling the coronavirus pandemic, down slightly from 76-21 percent in June.

“New Yorkers, who have not given their support to a Republican presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan won re-election in 1984, appear poised to provide Biden with New York’s 29 Electoral College votes in less than five weeks,” said Siena College pollster Steven Greenberg. “Biden holds a commanding 87-7 percent lead among Democrats and a 14-point lead with independents. Trump holds Republicans, 67-27 percent, but not nearly as well as Biden holds Democrats. Biden leads by 60 points in New York City, 20 points upstate and 14 points in the downstate suburbs.

“New York has 3.3 million more Democrats than Republicans. Trump’s favorability rating is way under water, and Biden’s is 30 points on the positive side. While only seven percent of Democrats view Trump favorably,
31 percent of Republicans have a favorable view of Biden,” Greenberg said. “Unlike in many of the battleground states that The New York Times/Siena College have been polling, where Republicans are in virtual lockstep with Trump, that is not the case in New York.

“Trump is viewed unfavorably by one-third of Republicans. He gets a negative job performance rating from one-third of Republicans. When it comes to his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, 38 percent of Republicans disapprove, as do 59 percent of independents and 89 percent of Democrats,” Greenberg said.

Cuomo Ratings Slide a Little; Still Remain Strong

“Nearly three-quarters of New Yorkers continue to approve of the job that Cuomo is doing to address the coronavirus pandemic. His job performance rating, basically unchanged from June, remains higher than at any time between 2013 and 2019. His favorability rating fell a few points but continues to be strong,” Greenberg said. While Cuomo continues to have extraordinarily high ratings with Democrats, his support among Republicans – which was positive in the early months of the pandemic – has fallen back, although it remains higher than it was immediately pre-pandemic.”

This Siena College Poll was conducted September 27-29, 2020 among 504 likely New York State voters, with a margin of error of +/- 4.4 percentage points.. Calls were made to a stratified weighted sample of voters from the L-2 Voter list via both land and cell phones. The data was weighted by party, age, race/ethnicity, education, region, gender and voter likelihood, a computed score that combines voter history, stated voter likelihood and modeled turnout by respondent.