New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is the gift that just keeps on giving. He is a political trainwreck and he does not even realize it.
He is the most disliked candidate running in the 2020 Democratic primary, and even that won’t stop him from going forward with his doomed candidacy, which, at this point, is little more than an exercise in supreme vanity.
The mayor has a -20% favorability rating, far worse than any other Democrat seeking the party’s nomination, according to YouGov/Economist survey released this week.
The poll, which was conducted between July 14 and 16 and has a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points for registered voters, surveyed 1,149 adults.
Respondents were asked whether they have a “favorable or an unfavorable opinion” of the 27 Democrats running in the 2020 primary. About 58% of respondents said they had an opinion on de Blasio, which, in terms of name recognition, places him ahead of 17 other candidates. Only 57% of respondents had an opinion on Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., while 50% had an opinion on Andrew Yang, 48% had an opinion on Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, and so on.
Here is a breakdown of the 2020 candidates based on the percentage of respondents with an opinion:
De Blasio comes in at 10th place for “most-recognized” in a pool of 27 possible Democratic candidates, which is not too shabby considering how crowded the race is. The problem for the mayor is this: The more people hear about him, the more they seem to dislike him, according to data flagged first by the Huffington Post’s Ariel Edwards-Levy.
Only 5% of the respondents who had heard of de Blasio said they had a “very favorable” opinion of him, while a larger 14% said they had a “somewhat favorable” opinion. A slightly smaller 13% said they held a “somewhat unfavorable” opinion of the mayor, while a whopping 26% said they held a “very unfavorable” view.
All of that combines for a net favorability rating of -20%, which is easily the worst showing of any of the Democratic candidates in the YouGov/Economist survey. The only other person who comes close to de Blasio is former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, who has not even been in the news cycle for several weeks and may not even end up running for president. Even new age guru Marianne Williamson performed better than de Blasio in the survey, with a -13% net favorability rating (of course, to be fair, only 43% of respondents had an opinion of Oprah’s spiritual advisor).
Here is a break down of the 2020 Democratic candidates based on net favorability:
This is on top of a separate primary poll of 351 New Hampshire registered voters released this week showing that, like Beto O’Rourke, not a single survey respondent cast a vote for the mayor’s 2020 campaign. There is also that CNN/Des Moines Register survey from June, which showed not a single respondent named the mayor as their first or even their second choice for presidential nominee. Of course, it should also be noted these primary polls come on the heels of a separate survey showing de Blasio is more unpopular in New York City than President Trump.
Face it, mayor, you have no shot at 2020. Not even in your own city.
(h/t Blake Gober.)
