The majority of New York voters said they favor Gov. Cuomo’s plan to use state funds to pay for an expansion of pre-kindergarten in the state, as opposed to Mayor de Blasio’s proposal to increase taxes on the city’s wealthy denizens. File photo
Despite Mayor de Blasio’s major push for residents to back his proposal to raise taxes on city residents annually making $500,000 or more to pay for pre-kindergarten for all 4-year-olds in the five boroughs, a new poll reported that the majority of state voters are backing Gov. Cuomo’s competing proposal that would entail using state funds to pay for a universal pre-K initiative in New York.
According to a Quinnipiac University poll released last week, voters statewide suppor 76 to 20 percent using state funding for universal pre-K, with support at 59 to 35 percent among Republicans and 91 to 7 percent among Democrats.
While residents don’t seem to see eye-to-eye with de Blasio on his proposal to increase taxes to pay for the initiative – a plan for which the mayor would need the blessing of Albany to do – voters did overwhelmingly throw their support behind the idea of pre-K. A total of 78 percent of voters said universal pre-K would be “very effective” or “somewhat effective” in improving education for New York’s children, and 74 percent said the program would be very or somewhat effective in putting poor children “on a path out of poverty,” according to the poll.
Additionally, voters in New York City were more split over the two proposals than their peers statewide, with 49 percent of city residents siding with Cuomo and 40 percent with de Blasio. The poll, conducted by telephone from Feb. 6 to 10, reached 1,488 voters across New York.
“Just about everyone in this most liberal of states likes universal pre-kindergarten, and they think, overwhelmingly, that kids will learn and that it will help them out of poverty,” said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. “But voters prefer Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s no-new-taxes approach to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s tax-the-rich plan to pay for those new classes.”
