New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani holds a commanding 69% favorability rating inside the five boroughs, but a new Siena University poll shows the self-described Democratic Socialist barely breaks even with voters statewide, a split that exposes the limits of his political brand beyond city lines.
The Siena Research Institute released the survey on August 12, polling 811 likely New York voters. In New York City, Mamdani drew 69% favorable marks against just 24% unfavorable, with roughly 8% offering no opinion. Statewide, those numbers tightened to approximately 47% favorable and 44% unfavorable, a margin thin enough to vanish inside any reasonable polling error.
Upstate, Mamdani is underwater. Voters there view him unfavorably by a 46-to-41 margin. For a mayor who has courted national progressive attention since taking office in January, those numbers suggest the rest of New York is not buying what the city is selling.
A prior Siena poll conducted June 17, 23 among 1,120 registered voters statewide had Mamdani at 58% favorable and 26% unfavorable inside the city. The August survey pushed his city approval up eleven points while barely moving his negatives. That is a strong trajectory inside the five boroughs.
Statewide, the shift was far more modest. In June, Mamdani sat at 45% favorable and 34% unfavorable, with a full 21% of respondents saying they had no opinion. By August, his favorable number inched up only about two points while his unfavorable rating surged ten points, from 34% to 44%. The undecided pool shrank, and most of those voters landed against him.
That pattern matters. A mayor who converts undecided voters into opponents rather than supporters is not building statewide goodwill. He is hardening opposition.
Mamdani's political difficulties extend well beyond polling. The teachers' union president broke publicly with the mayor over falling reading scores and stalled paraprofessional pay, the kind of institutional split that erodes a progressive coalition from the inside.
For the first time, Siena asked respondents about the Democratic Socialists of America, the political organization to which Mamdani belongs. The results were not kind to the DSA brand.
Statewide, only 30% of voters view the DSA favorably. Forty-seven percent view it unfavorably, and roughly 23% had no opinion. Even inside New York City, where the DSA has its strongest foothold, the organization managed just 49% favorable against 32% unfavorable, with about 20% unsure.
Mamdani outperforms his own party organization by twenty points in the city and seventeen points statewide. That gap raises an obvious question: is his favorability personal, or ideological? If voters like Mamdani but reject the DSA, his political ceiling may be lower than his current city numbers suggest, especially if he ever seeks higher office or needs allies in Albany.
The mayor's handling of a suspected antisemitic stabbing incident earlier this year drew sharp criticism when he stayed silent for hours while posting about housing taxes. Episodes like that travel beyond city limits and shape the impressions of voters who do not see Mamdani's day-to-day governance up close.
Mamdani's 41-46 deficit upstate fits a well-worn pattern in New York politics. Urban progressives have struggled for decades to win favor outside the New York City media market, and a DSA-affiliated mayor starts that race at a disadvantage. Upstate voters tend to prioritize fiscal restraint, public safety, and skepticism of the kind of activist government Mamdani has championed.
The mayor was reportedly vacationing at an unspecified upstate location with his family when the poll dropped, a detail that carries its own irony, given the region's cool reception.
His controversies have not been limited to policy, either. Nearly 17,000 9/11 families and supporters petitioned to bar Mamdani from the 25th anniversary ceremony, a public rebuke that cut across partisan lines and underscored deep dissatisfaction with his leadership on matters of civic duty and respect.
Meanwhile, the Siena poll also surveyed Governor Kathy Hochul, though the article reporting the results did not publish her numbers, leaving no direct comparison between the state's two most prominent Democratic officeholders.
Mamdani's literacy program has drawn its own backlash, with sharply declining reading scores prompting the city's teachers' union chief to challenge the initiative publicly. For a mayor who built his brand on progressive policy ambition, falling test scores are a stubborn, measurable counterargument.
A 69% favorability rating inside New York City is genuinely impressive for any mayor in his first year. But the numbers outside the five boroughs tell a different story, one of a polarizing figure whose ideological home base does not travel well.
The DSA's own weak favorability compounds the problem. Mamdani can outrun his organization's brand for now, but political gravity tends to close that gap over time, especially when opponents have a clear label to hang around a candidate's neck.
And Mamdani has handed his critics no shortage of material. His public clashes with the Trump administration, including a direct rebuke from the president over the Netanyahu arrest controversy, play well with the city's progressive base but reinforce the impression upstate and beyond that this mayor governs for ideology first and results second.
Siena's August poll did not include a margin of error in the published reporting, and the shift from registered voters in June to likely voters in August makes direct comparison imperfect. Still, the broad strokes are clear enough: Mamdani owns New York City, and the rest of the state is not impressed.
A mayor beloved in his own city and mistrusted everywhere else is not a leader building a coalition, he is a leader confirming one.
