Bill de Blasio has an astonishing 8 percent favorable rating

Bill de Blasio.
(Image credit: Scott Olson/Getty Images)

The latest 2020 poll from Quinnipiac sure doesn't look great for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.

A Quinnipiac poll released Tuesday shows de Blasio, who launched his 2020 presidential campaign last week, with an 8 percent favorable rating. Forty-five percent of voters said they have an unfavorable opinion of him, while 48 percent say they haven't heard enough about him.

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The New York City mayor's net favorability, which is calculated by subtracting his unfavorable rating from his favorable rating, among all voters is -37 percent. For comparison, former congressman Beto O'Rourke's net favorability is -12 percent. Fewer than one percent of Democratic voters said they would vote for de Blasio in the 2020 primary.

De Blasio's favorability rating is also quite low even among Democrats: just 14 percent, compared to 35 percent who have an unfavorable opinion of him.

At least one polling expert was stunned at how bad this showing was, with CNN's Harry Enten writing, "These numbers are about the worst I've seen for a non-scandal'd politician."

Of course, this isn't the first round of poor polling de Blasio has received, with a previous Quinnipiac poll finding that 76 percent of New York City voters didn't want him to run for president. Faced with a question about this poll upon jumping into the race, de Blasio said last week, "I think about polling in general, it's not where you start, it's where you end."

Quinnipiac's poll was conducted by speaking with 1,078 registered voters over the phone from May 16-20. The margin of error is 3.8 percentage points. Read the full poll at Quinnipiac.

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Brendan Morrow

Brendan worked as a culture writer at The Week from 2018 to 2023, covering the entertainment industry, including film reviews, television recaps, awards season, the box office, major movie franchises and Hollywood gossip. He has written about film and television for outlets including Bloody Disgusting, Showbiz Cheat Sheet, Heavy and The Celebrity Cafe.