Metro

Gov. Cuomo receives good marks on his handling of Sandy

ALBANY – In post-Sandy New York, voters believe in Gov. Cuomo – and global warming.

A new poll out today finds 67 percent of state voters give Cuomo excellent or good marks for how he’s dealt with Superstorm Sandy and its aftermath to 22 who say he did a fair job and seven a poor job. – better than 61-20-17 for President Obama and 55-24-14 for Mayor Bloomberg (60-22-17 among city voters).

The Siena College poll also found 69 percent of respondents believe recent severe storms are part of global climate change, with just 24 percent calling them isolated weather events – with even slightly more Republicans siding with climate change.

“There may be a debate about what has caused the global climate change, but for most New Yorkers there is no debate that it is occurring,” said poll spokesman Steven Greenberg..

The survey found 82 percent of city voters – 72 percent statewide – favor “a major infrastructure project” to protect the Big Apple from future dramatic weather events, though the poll didn’t cite a pricetag. Cuomo is asking Washington for $9 billion to protect the city from storms.

Also getting good marks for their response to Sandy were the Metropolitan Transit Authority (59 percent excellent/good, 22 percent fair, seven percent poor), Federal Emergency Management Agency (53-27-15) and Consolidated Edison (39-29-15). But the Long Island Power Authority (20-20-47) didn’t. And while ConEd did better in the city (54-28-13) than statewide, LIPA did worse on Long Island (16-21-60).

The Nov. 26-29 telephone survey of 822 registered voters also found 53 percent have contributed to Sandy relief charity efforts, while 26 percent, including nearly a third downstate, have volunteered to help Sandy victims – though only 4 percent said they’ve actually received financial help so far.

A quarter of downstate suburbanites and nearly one in seven around New York suffered damage to their home, while more than 80 percent of suburbanites and more than a third statewide lost power, the poll found. More than two-thirds experienced school closures of at least a day, while a third had schools closed for at least a week.

“Not in a very long time has a natural disaster directly affected more New Yorkers than Sandy,” Greenberg said.

The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.