Majority of New Yorkers think Cuomo should resign, face charges

Roughly 7 in 10 New York voters think Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) should resign following the release of the state attorney general’s bombshell report showing that Cuomo sexually harassed several women, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll released Friday. 

The poll, conducted on Wednesday and Thursday, found that 70 percent of New York voters overall believe Cuomo should step down, with 88 percent of Republicans backing his resignation and 57 percent of Democrats saying the same. 

The Quinnipiac survey also recorded Cuomo’s overall job approval rating at 28 percent, the lowest ever recorded for the governor since he took office in 2011. 

A majority of voters, 63 percent, also expressed support for Cuomo being impeached or removed from office, which comes as the chairman of the New York state committee overseeing the impeachment inquiry into Cuomo said this week that the probe was almost complete. 

A lower percentage of voters, though still a majority at 55 percent, said that Cuomo should be criminally charged for the sexual assault allegations. 

Cuomo, who has denied the accusations against him and has repeatedly refused to resign, now faces a criminal complaint filed Thursday afternoon with the Albany County Sheriff’s office by an unnamed woman who formerly worked as an assistant to the governor. 

Albany County District Attorney David Soares (D) said Tuesday that he was carrying out a criminal investigation into Cuomo, and asked New York Attorney General Letitia James’s (D) office to share materials related to its investigation that led to the Tuesday report. 

The support for Cuomo’s resignation measured in the Quinnipiac poll, which surveyed 615 self-identified voters in New York, was higher than the 63 percent measured in a Marist University poll conducted in the hours after the report’s release. 

The report from James’s office detailed allegations from 11 different women, including several current and former New York state employees, concluding that Cuomo had participated in “unwelcome and nonconsensual touching” and made “numerous offensive comments of a suggestive and sexual nature that created a hostile work environment for women.” 

The attorney general’s office further found that the governor and members of his senior team took actions to retaliate against Lindsey Boylan, the first former Cuomo staff member to publicly accuse Cuomo of sexual harassment. 

Boylan’s lawyers announced this week that they would be suing Cuomo and his top advisers for attempts to retaliate against Boylan, arguing that there was “an entire conspiracy to diminish her and to hurt her credibility.” 

Cuomo has faced growing bipartisan calls to resign from other elected officials, including President Biden himself. 

The Quinnipiac poll reported a margin of error of 4 percentage points.