Surprised These Poll Numbers Aren't Worse

A new Quinnipiac poll shows Mayor de Blasio under water in job performance:

Less than half of New York City voters approve of the job Mayor de Blasio is doing in his first three months in office, a mediocre rating that is well below his NYPD Police Commissioner Bill Bratton and City Controller Scott Stringer, according to a new Quinnipiac poll.

Forty-five percent of voters said they approved of de Blasio's job performance, with 34 percent saying they disapprove, the poll found. Another 20 percent said they didn't know enough to form an opinion or didn't want to answer.

It's similar to results in a Marist poll out earlier this month, which found only 39 percent of voters thought he was doing a "good" or "excellent" job. A Quinnipiac poll from January had de Blasio with a 53-13 percent approval rating.

Hizzoner's latest numbers are much lower than ex-Mayor Michael Bloomberg had at this point in his tenure. A Quinnipiac poll from March 27 2002 showed then-rookie Mayor Bloomberg with a 62 percent approval rating. Sixteen percent disapproved of Bloomberg in that poll.

A January Quinnipiac poll taken right after de Blasio was inaugurated found with a 53-13 approval rating, eight points above his current ranking.

Given that the attacks against de Blasio have been relentless and well-funded, from the Murdoch papers ginning up a snow controversy back in January, the attacks over "Forkgate" (when de Blasio ate pizza with a fork), "speedgate" (when the papers reported de Blasio's mayoral motorcade sped through the city a day after he pushed for new safety rules regarding speeding) and of course the infamous (and phony) "war against charters" that Eva Moskowitz and corporate media outlets claim he is waging, I'm quite frankly surprised he's not in the 30's in job performance approval.

And notice the Quinnipiac people putting the Bloomberg approval in there to stick it to de Blasio even more.

Two things to say here:

First, Bloomberg didn't have the media and charter school assaults de Blasio has taken since he was inaugurated, so the Bloomberg numbers don't mean all that much to me (especially since his fellow media moguls at the Times, Post, Journal and News all took it easy on him for most of his three terms - unlike what they've given de Blasio in his first few months in office.)

Second, there is still plenty of time for de Blasio to turn this around - but he must get better about handling the media, heading off controversies before they start, or, if that fails, putting them to rest after one media cycle.

He can't get beaten up too many more times before the meme that he is a failure as a mayor gets baked in.

If you missed it, Blake Zeff had a very good piece on where de Blasio should go from here at Capital NY.