Siena College poll fielded August 3–6, 2026 puts Mayor Mamdani at 69% favorable among NYC voters — the highest first-year rating in recent memory, up 11 points since June.
A Siena College poll fielded August 3–6, 2026 puts New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani at 69% favorable among city voters — 24% unfavorable. It is the highest favorability rating any NYC mayor has recorded in Siena polling in recent memory. And it is 11 points higher than his June number.
The trajectory is not a blip. It is a straight line.
Mamdani's Siena Favorability Among NYC Voters: 46% to 69% in 12 Months
Every Siena poll since Mamdani first appeared in the survey tells the same story:
- August 2025: 46% favorable / 32% unfavorable — his first Siena reading, taken during the general election campaign against Andrew Cuomo, Curtis Sliwa, and Eric Adams
- November 2025: 55% / 31% — post-election, pre-inauguration
- December 2025: 61% / 23% — entering office with momentum
- March 2026: 56% / 26% — a dip during the $12 billion budget-gap disclosure
- April 2026: 56% / 34% — unfavorables spike as the property-tax debate heats up
- June 2026: 58% / 26% — recovery after the balanced budget lands
- August 2026: 69% / 24% — all-time high
That is +23 points favorable and −8 points unfavorable in one year. No recent NYC mayor comes close. Bill de Blasio peaked in the mid-50s early in his first term and cratered below 30% by his second. Eric Adams never broke 50% favorable in Siena polling — and was indicted in September 2024.
What Is Driving the Numbers: A $124.7 Billion Budget, Free Childcare, and Delivery
Mamdani entered office in January 2026 facing what he called a $12 billion inherited budget gap — larger, both City and State Comptrollers confirmed, than any since the Great Recession. Both comptrollers agreed the Adams administration had substantially underbudgeted core services.
In May 2026, Mamdani released a $124.7 billion Executive Budget for Fiscal Year 2027 that balanced without raising property taxes, cutting services, or draining the city's Rainy Day or Retiree Health Benefit Trust funds. He achieved $1.77 billion in gap-closing savings by ordering every agency to appoint a Chief Savings Officer. An additional $1.2 billion came from addressing systemic inefficiencies in special education, class-size compliance, and the CityFHEPS rental assistance program. Governor Kathy Hochul provided $4 billion in state support.
The budget funded the first phase of Mamdani's cornerstone campaign promise: universal free childcare. A $1.2 billion agreement with Hochul funds 2,000 free seats for 2-year-olds in the current year, 12,000 seats next year, on a path to a seat for every 2-year-old in New York City by the end of his first term. The savings for families: more than $20,000 a year in a city where childcare runs $26,000–$40,000 annually.
The city also launched its first free on-site childcare pilot for municipal workers — 40 children ages 6 weeks to 3 years at the David N. Dinkins Municipal Building, with applications opening April 30, 2026.
The Business Community Tension: Ken Griffin's Warning and the Tax Math
The popularity is not universal. Mamdani's budget relies on new taxes on the wealthy — a 2% personal income tax surcharge on New Yorkers earning more than $1 million annually, and a corporate tax rate increase from 8.85% to 11.5% for the city's most profitable companies.
Citadel CEO Ken Griffin warned that higher taxes and what he called perceived anti-business policies could push firms to expand outside the city, eroding future tax revenue. Mamdani's proposed $9 billion annual tax package — $5 billion from the corporate increase, $4 billion from the surcharge — represents roughly an 11% increase on projected state and local taxes of $82.8 billion.
Statewide, Mamdani's numbers are positive but softer: 45% favorable / 34% unfavorable as of June 2026. Upstate and suburban voters remain skeptical. But inside the five boroughs — where 8.3 million people live and $81.7 billion in taxes are collected — he is consolidating power at a rate his predecessors could not.
The Political Context: DSA to City Hall to 69%
Mamdani is the first Democratic Socialists of America member to serve as mayor of New York City. A Queens assemblyman of Ugandan-Indian descent, he won the Democratic primary in June 2025, defeated Andrew Cuomo in the general election with 46% in a four-way race, and took office January 1, 2026.
Seven months later, the Siena numbers say the city is with him — and the margin is widening, not narrowing.
For comparison: when Adams took office in January 2022, his first Siena favorability reading was in the low 40s. He never recovered. When de Blasio took office in January 2014, he polled in the mid-50s — and that was the peak.
Mamdani at 69% is not just high. It is historically unusual for a New York City mayor in the first year of his term.
What 69% Buys
Political capital. The free bus proposal — estimated at $600–$800 million in lost MTA revenue annually — is still unfunded and still on Mamdani's list. Universal childcare from 6 weeks to 5 years, at full scale, would cost $6 billion a year. The affordable housing program calls for $10 billion annually. A new $1 billion mental health outreach department has been proposed.
At 69% favorable, Mamdani has the political room to push Albany harder than any NYC mayor in recent memory. Whether the legislature — and the state's business establishment — follows is the next question.
But the number is the number. Sixty-nine percent of New York City has a favorable view of its mayor. In a city that famously hates everyone it elects, that is a fact worth recording.
