ROCHESTER, NY (WXXI) - One day after New York voters gave Governor Cuomo his lowest favorability rating, voters polled by Siena College are giving Cuomo’s plans to bring Amazon to New York a big thumbs up.
Siena College Research Institute Director Don Levy says a new poll indicates New Yorkers favor the deal by 56 to 36 percent.
``The deal that we framed in the question was granting up to three billion dollars in incentives to Amazon in return for them locating the office here in Queens, based on it projecting 25 thousand jobs. So we see a 20 percent bulge of approval,” he said.
Levy says many of the questions in this new poll deal with controversial issues that were once non-starters politically, but are now on the table with Democrats in control of both chambers in the legislature and the governor’s office.
New Yorkers also agree with Gov. Cuomo’s call to count every New Yorker for the 2020 Census.
But they don’t’ want to spend more than the $10 million the state spent to promote participation in the 2010 Census.
``Over 80 percent of Upstaters say either less or the same. Very few, only one in ten Upstaters say they’d like to spend more money. So a little bit of a confused message coming from voters,” he said.
Levy says at the same time, voters support adding a question to the 2020 Census that asks whether or not each person is a U.S. Citizen -- a question could drive down the census count for New York in 2020.
They also support by a wide margin a bill that would allow doctors to prescribe lethal drugs to the terminally ill.
But they’re split about 50/50 on broadening the current sports betting law to allow for online sports betting.