New Yorkers are siding with Gov. Cuomo over Mayor de Blasio in the battle over how to fund universal pre-kindergarten, a Quinnipiac Poll released Wednesday finds.
By a 49% to 40% margin, city voters support Cuomo’s proposal to provide universal pre-k without a tax hike over the mayor’s insistence on paying for the expansion by raising levies on high earners. Statewide, registered voters back the Cuomo plan 47% to 37%.
“The mayor made his argument again in his State of the City speech. It will be interesting to see how a mayor elected with a huge margin of a small turnout fares with up-for-election state officials,” Quinnipiac’s Maurice Carroll said in a release.
Cuomo’s plan played better across nearly every gender, political and geographic group, save Democrats, who support de Blasio’s tax-the-rich idea 49% to 39%.
The survey found voters both overwhelmingly support pre-kindergarten programming and having the state fund it. In general, 76% said the state should pay, including an overwhelming 91% of Democrats.
Around three-quarters said universal pre-k would improve education for all New York children, and a similar number said it would help put poor children “on a path out of poverty.”
At the same time, 55% of those polled said pre-k should be optional, not compulsory.
Overall, more city voters — 44% — say de Blasio’s political views most closely resemble their own, while 38% identify more with Cuomo.
Statewide, however, 44% say Cuomo’s views are more in line with their own thinking, versus 27% who view de Blasio’s thinking as more akin to their personal stances and 28% who aren’t sure.
De Blasio pulls a 31% favorable rating from voters, while 24% perceive him unfavorably and most, 44%, say they haven’t heard enough about him to form an opinion.
When it comes to priorities, given an open-ended question, 28% of Quinnipiac respondents said jobs and the economy are their top issues, while 18% picked education or school funding. Just one percent singled out early childhood education or pre-k as Priority No. 1.
About 12% picked taxes as their main focus, while merely two percent listed income or class inequality — one of de Blasio’s signature campaign and governance themes.
Quinnipiac also polled on the eternally controversial issue of natural gas
.
The latest survey found state voters oppose fracking in the Marcellus Shale, 45% to 41%. Suburban voters narrowly support the drilling, New York City voters oppose it, and upstaters are split.
As to Cuomo, 35% of those polled feel he’s “dragging his feet” to avoid making a call on fracking, 23% say he’s “carefully evaluating” the idea, and 37% are undecided.
Quinnipiac surveyed 1,488 state voters from Feb. 6 to 10. The poll has an error margin of 2.5 percentage points.
IMAGE: RICHARD HARBUS FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
