Close to 80 percent of voters in Santos’s district think he should step down: poll

Nearly 80 percent of voters who live in embattled Rep. George Santos’s New York district want him to resign from Congress, according to a new survey that comes the same day the first-term Republican told colleagues he’d be stepping down from his committee assignments.

A Newsday/Siena College poll released on Tuesday, which questioned voters from New York’s 3rd Congressional District, found that 78 percent of respondents think Santos should resign, including 71 percent of Republicans, 72 percent of independents and 89 percent of Democrats. 

Thirteen percent of respondents overall said they didn’t think the Long Island Republican should step down, while another 9 percent said they did not know or did not have an opinion.

Three-fourths of respondents said they did not think Santos could be an effective representative for his district, including 65 percent of Republicans, 74 percent of independents and 84 percent of Democrats.

And 71 percent of respondents said that Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was wrong to seat Santos on two congressional committees, including 59 percent of Republicans, 69 percent of independents and 82 percent of Democrats. 

“Talk about buyers’ remorse. NY 3 voters elected George Santos by a comfortable margin not even three months ago. But today, the vast majority of his new constituents — including the vast majority of those who voted for him — want him gone,” Siena College Poll Director Don Levy said in a press release regarding the poll’s results.

“Discouragingly, three-quarters or more of voters of every party say that Santos’ behavior and now his refusing to resign show that our political system is broken, not that his behavior says little about the state of our politics.”

The polling comes as Santos has faced calls from Democrats and even his fellow Republicans in Congress, particularly New York members, to resign after he admitted he had fabricated parts of his identity and history and as news outlets continue to report discrepancies about his life. He’s also been under scrutiny regarding his financial disclosures. 

Santos told his fellow House Republicans on Tuesday that he is walking away from his committee seats, but he has rejected calls to step down entirely, and McCarthy has refused to call for his resignation.

The Newsday/Siena College poll surveyed 653 residents from New York’s 3rd Congressional District Jan. 23-26. The margin of error is 4.4 percentage points.