Contrary to what government officials, public protesters, and tweets suggest, New Yorkers would love to have Amazon as their new neighbor.
About a month ago, Amazon announced it would plop one of its massive new headquarters in Long Island City, Queens. And it turns out New York City residents overwhelmingly approve of the deal, 57-26 percent, a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday shows.
The decision to put one Amazon HQ2 in Queens and another in northern Virginia sparked concerns over how New York's already crumbling transit system would support 25,000 new workers. But that didn't seem to worry the borough's residents, with 60 percent of Queens respondents approving the deal and 26 percent opposing it. They also didn't have a problem with New York enticing Amazon with a few billion dollars in tax incentives, approving of that 55 to 39 percent. Queens and the Bronx largely support the incentives, while Staten Island and Brooklyn are divided. The only borough opposed is Manhattan, where 52 percent of resident oppose the tax breaks and only 39 percent support them.
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Some government officials and advocates took issue with New York's leaders paying a multi-billion-dollar company to move in, rather than funding education and public services. Reflecting that, 38 percent of New Yorkers disapproved of how Mayor Bill De Blasio (D) and Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) each handled the Amazon deal, the poll shows. Just 31 percent approved of De Blasio's actions, but another 30 percent said they didn't know.
Quinnipiac surveyed 1,075 New York City voters from Nov. 27 through Dec. 4 with a 3.8 percent margin of error.
