After suffering a blizzard of criticism following the city’s botched effort to remove snow from the city’s streets last week, Mayor Bloomberg has scored his lowest approval rating since taking office, according to a poll released today.
Bloomberg’s 37 percent approval rating is the lowest mark he has received since taking office in January 2002 and he has the fallout from the blizzard to thank for it.
Only 11 percent said Bloomberg is doing an excellent job and 26 percent claim he is doing a good one, according to a NY1/Marist College poll.
“Mayor Bloomberg clearly will need a big shovel if he wants to dig himself out of this political storm, and it looks like the next opportunity is heading his way,” said Lee Miringoff, director of The Marist College Institute for Public Opinion.
A new snowstorm is expected tomorrow.
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When Marist last asked about Bloomberg’s overall performance in an October 2010 survey, 50 percent of registered voters had given him high marks at the time.
At that time, only 14 percent said he was doing an excellent job and 36 percent claimed he was doing a good one.
Bloomberg’s popularity also differs by borough.
A whopping 55 percent of Manhattan voters approve of Bloomberg’s job performance, followed by 39 percent in the Bronx, 36 percent in Queens and Staten Island and only 24 percent in Brooklyn.
Brooklyn and Queens were two of the hardest hit boroughs after 20 inches of snow blanketed the city. Bloomberg came under fire in the days after the blizzard for the city’s failure to properly plow and clear streets.
The survey also found:
— When it came to how Bloomberg handled the snow removal, 21 percent of adults in the city approved, while a whopping 71 percent disapproved.
— The Department of Sanitation did not fare much better, with 72 percent of city residents approving of how the agency handled the snow removal. More people living in Brooklyn (77 percent) and Queens and Staten Island (72 percent) felt this way compared with those in the Bronx (69 percent) and Manhattan (68 percent).
— Residents in Brooklyn (78 percent), Queens and Staten Island (71 percent) were most dissatisfied. Sixty-nine percent of those who live in the Bronx and 63 percent in Manhattan were also unhappy with Bloomberg’s performance during the blizzard and in the aftermath.
— Some 37 percent of those polled think Bloomberg learned a lot from the storm; 26 percent believe he learned little and 28 percent said he learned nothing from the experience.
How the blizzard will impact Bloomberg’s legacy, 39 percent think he will leave behind a positive one, the poll found.
However, 15 percent of those surveyed said his legacy will be below average — with just 10 percent saying he will be perceived as one of the city’s worst mayors.
By comparison, a Marist survey from last August, 46 percent thought the mayor’s legacy would be positive.
The poll of 600 adults was conducted Tuesday after 439 registered voters in the city were randomly surveyed by phone.