Leer en Español
Fifty-five percent of voters rated New York Governor Andrew Cuomo negatively regarding his cover-up of data on coronavirus deaths in nursing homes.
Only 39% of respondents gave him a positive rating of good or excellent. So reveals a Siena College poll, reviewed by the New York Post.
“When it comes to making data public on nursing home patient deaths, the issue for which voters rate Cuomo most harshly, he gets approval from only 54 percent of Democrats, while 81 percent of Republicans and 63 percent of independents give him negative ratings,” said Siena pollster Steven Greenber.
He added, “New York City voters are closely divided, but upstate and upstate suburbanites give Cuomo negative ratings.”
Overall, 61% of voters approved of Cuomo’s handling of the pandemic, while 34% disapproved.
Two-thirds of respondents approved of the way he communicated with people during the pandemic, while 61% gave him a positive ratin for providing accurate information.
The poll of 804 voters was conducted Feb. 7-11th and has a margin of error of 4.3 percentage points.
It came after state Attorney General Letitia James issued a damning report last month concluding that the Cuomo Administration underestimated nursing home deaths from COVID-19 by 50%.
It also came after a state judge issued a Feb. 3rd ruling criticizing Cuomo for illegally blocking the release of information in response to a legal request filed by the Empire Center for Public Policy, a government watchdog group. Albany Supreme Court Justice Kimberly O’Connor ordered the Cuomo team to turn over the data regarding COVID-19 deaths.
Only after the court’s ruling and the Attorney General’s report did the Cuomo team begin to disclose a more extensive tally, which included nursing home residents who died in hospitals as well as nursing homes.
As of Saturday, official figures show, 13,407 nursing home residents died from COVID-19, including 4,181, more than 31 percent, in hospitals.
