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Ocasio-Cortez Blames Low Favorability on Racism, Sexism, Fox News

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez / Getty Images
March 18, 2019

New York Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Monday shared a tweet blaming her low favorability numbers in a newly released poll on bigotry and Fox News.

A Siena College poll of New York State voters found that Ocasio-Cortez's favorability is underwater, with 31 percent viewing her favorably and 44 percent viewing her unfavorably. Those results mirror national polling from Gallup and Fox News, which found that Ocasio-Cortez has a net approval rating of -10 and -13 points, respectively.

Ocasio-Cortez notably struggles even with some members of her own party, with 30 percent of New York Democrats viewing her unfavorably. Siena also found that voters are not happy with Ocasio-Cortez's opposition to the New York City-Amazon deal, which two-thirds of New Yorkers supported, according to the poll.

"More people think that Amazon, Governor Cuomo, Mayor de Blasio, the State Senate, and local Queens activists were villains in this saga than they were heroes," wrote pollster Steven Greenberg. "However, voters say the biggest villain was Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Only 12 percent call her hero, while 38 percent label her a villain."

The results garnered significant attention from reporters and media outlets, leading one Ocasio-Cortez fan to say, "It's interesting to see centrists suddenly downplay or ignore the effects of racism, sexism and Fox News targeting when discussing [her] overall approval ratings."

Ocasio-Cortez shared the tweet, and complained, "When 'centrists' care more about the GOP base than the Dem base, bigotry gets legitimized."

Ocasio-Cortez had previously blamed white men and Fox News for her poor showing in the Gallup poll in a pair of tweets on Saturday.