Poll Finds Slight Decline in Cuomo\'s Popularity After Gun Package

ALBANY - Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo saw only a modest decline in his popularity among New York State voters after winning passage of strict new gun laws last month, and voters approve of the new laws more than two to one, according to a Siena College poll released Monday.

The poll’s findings were considerably more positive for Mr. Cuomo than another survey released last week by Quinnipiac University, which found that the governor’s approval rating had declined by 15 percentage points in the wake of the gun measure’s passage.

In the Siena poll, conducted last week, 67 percent of voters said they had a favorable opinion of Mr. Cuomo, down four percentage points from a poll conducted in mid-January. Fifty-eight percent rated is job performance as excellent or good, a decline of two percentage points.

But Mr. Cuomo did lose standing among Republicans: 63 percent said they opposed the new gun laws; 33 percent supported them. And for the first time since Mr. Cuomo took office more than two years ago, Siena found that more Republicans - 54 percent - had an unfavorable view of the governor than a favorable one.

“Clearly Governor Cuomo has spent political capital to get the gun law passed, but he still remains extraordinarily popular,” said Steven A. Greenberg, a Siena pollster. “His numbers did not move substantially at all with Democrats or independents. His numbers barely moved in New York City and the downstate suburbs.”

Differences in the wording and the order of questions can affect the outcome of a poll. In addition, Quinnipiac and Siena weight their polls differently.  For example, the Quinnipiac poll has slightly more voters from upstate New York than the Siena poll.

Because Siena adju! sts its results to match the ratio of voters who are enrolled as Republicans and Democrats, there are more Democrats and fewer independents included than in the Quinnipiac poll. Quinnipiac does not weight by party, and its conclusions of the opinions of Republicans and Democrats are based on which party voters identify themselves as, not how they are registered.

The Siena poll was conducted by telephone from Jan. 27 to 31. It included 1,154 registered voters and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points.