by Adam Nagourney And Marjorie Connelly, The New York Times
Nine months after the destruction of the World Trade Center, New Yorkers say they are struggling with the psychological fallout from the attack, with many avoiding visits to skyscrapers, landmarks and stadiums, and reporting persistent anxiety and sleeplessness, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
And while most New Yorkers say their daily routine has returned to normal, an overwhelming number say they are “personally very concerned” that their city will be struck again by terrorists, the poll found.
Still, for all that, New Yorkers remain, over all, extraordinarily optimistic about the immediate health of New York and its long-term future. The number of people who think that New York will be a better place to live in 10 or 15 years is higher than it was the month before the attack.
Nearly two-thirds of respondents said that given a choice, they would prefer to be living in New York City four years from now than anyplace else. And notwithstanding the fact that the city is facing its worst budget crisis in at least 20 years, with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg warning of tougher times ahead, most respondents said they considered the city economy to be in good shape.
And in one striking change in attitude, two-thirds of respondents, including half of black New Yorkers, said racial relations were generally good in New York — the highest percentage since The Times began asking that question in 1988.
The departure of Rudolph W. Giuliani and the election of Mr. Bloomberg seem to account for a good deal of that shift in attitude. Mr. Bloomberg gets much higher ratings in dealing with race relations than his predecessor. He is also more popular among black New Yorkers than Mr. Giuliani was at the same point in his first term in office.
Even in this time of overall anxiety, education has, more than ever, emerged as the clear top concern of New Yorkers. An overwhelming majority of New York City parents who were polled said they were unhappy with the condition of New York City schools, and this is the one area in which Mr. Bloomberg did not receive good marks.
The poll, however, was taken just as Mr. Bloomberg negotiated successfully with Albany leaders to overhaul the way the school system is managed; that could change New Yorkers’ perception of his handling of the issue.
More than that, the Times/CBS News poll suggested that New Yorkers are not quite sure what to make of their new mayor. Nearly half of all New Yorkers said they approved of the way Mr. Bloomberg was handling his job, but a quarter said they did not have an opinion of him six months into his first term. (By contrast, 85 percent of respondents said they approved of the job Mr. Giuliani was doing as mayor when the question was asked last October; just 5 percent were unable to offer an opinion.)
The Times/CBS News telephone poll, which began Tuesday and was completed Sunday, involved 940 adults in New York City. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.
The poll was awash in contradictory sentiments, a portrait of a city that is going through traumatic times, trying to balance optimism and hope for the future with a clear sense of fearfulness and resignation to a belief that New York City will again be the subject of an attack.
On one hand, New Yorkers expressed deep confidence in their city; nearly 85 percent of respondents said they were very or somewhat confident that New York’s economy would recover from the terrorist attack. Yet 60 percent said they thought that the threat of a terrorist attack in New York City was greater than it was in any other big city.
There were a number of indications in the poll that New Yorkers are feeling less secure than they did just 10 months ago. Last August, nearly 60 percent said they thought New York City was a safer city than it had been four years ago. In this latest poll, barely 40 percent of respondents said that.
Although that question was originally intended to measure fear of crime, it has clearly come to encompass a fear of being the victim of terrorism as well.
“I’m always looking around,” James P. Brickley, 38, a managing director at a human rights consulting firm who lives on the Upper West Side, said in a follow-up interview. “When I hear a plane, I’m always looking up. When I’m on the subway, I’m always wondering if someone’s going to do something crazy.”
The sense of insecurity found in the poll might have been heightened because it was taken just as the White House was issuing alerts about potential future terrorist attacks. Whatever the cause, an undercurrent of nervousness was evident in many of the responses. Half of the respondents said that security at New York City airports, bridges and tunnels and nuclear plants was not sufficient.
One in three said that attacks made them less likely to attend crowd events, such as baseball games, which have been identified by federal officials as possible targets of terrorist attacks. More than one-third of subway riders said they were uneasy while riding underground, while one-quarter of New Yorkers who visit or work in skyscrapers said the experience left them on edge.
“I think twice about going to crowded areas,” Arlyne Schneiderman, 56, an administrative assistant in an oil company who lives in Morris Park in the Bronx, said in a follow-up interview. “When the crowds go into New York, I go out. I think twice about going to a concert. I think twice about going to a parade. I used to go to Yankee games and football games, and now I don’t.”
Respondents seemed to think that an attack was almost inevitable, and likely to happen in New York: 70 percent said that an attack on the United States in the next few months was somewhat or very likely. And 60 percent said they thought the likelihood of an attack in New York City was higher than it was in other cities.
Nearly one-third said they felt nervous or on edge since the attacks; another third said they had felt that way, but no longer did. And 16 percent said they were still having trouble sleeping.
“I don’t think anything in history compares to this,” said George Timm, 40, who works as a caterer. “This is a whole new chapter and it’s a very dark chapter.”
For all that, though, the poll was filled with indications that New Yorkers are feeling confident about the city on a variety of fronts.
Most strikingly, given the past 20 years in the city, was the favorable attitude on racial relations. Most New Yorkers said they approved of how Mr. Bloomberg, who has proven to be much less confrontational than Mr. Giuliani, has handled race relations in New York; 4 in 10 blacks said they approved of Mr. Bloomberg’s performance on this front.
That is one of the biggest differences in the perceptions of the former mayor and the current one. In June 1994, six months after Mr. Giuliani took office, 70 percent of white respondents said they approved of his performance, compared with just 25 percent of blacks. Although there is a racial gap for Mr. Bloomberg as well, it is nowhere near as great: 56 percent of whites and 39 percent of blacks expressed approval of his job performance.
Still, Mr. Bloomberg remains something of an undefined figure. For example, half of all New Yorkers said they were undecided or had not heard enough about their new mayor to say whether they had a favorable opinion of him.
Of the remainder, 36 percent did express a favorable opinion of him; just 12 percent said they had an unfavorable view.
Mr. Giuliani is viewed more positively than he has ever been. Nearly three-quarters of New Yorkers said they held a favorable opinion of him, including nearly half of all blacks.
If there is one issue on which Mr. Bloomberg’s performance was questioned it involves the public school system. One-third of respondents said that improving public schools should be the No. 1 priority of the mayor; Mr. Bloomberg’s relentless focus on the issue over the past six months suggests that he might have been reading similar polls.
Still, 40 percent said they were unhappy with Mr. Bloomberg’s performance in this area, and 21 percent said Mr. Bloomberg was not doing as good a job with schools as his predecessor.
The concern about public schools is particularly acute among parents: 70 percent of parents of school-aged children said they were unhappy with the quality of education in the public school system. Almost 30 percent of parents said that attracting and keeping good teachers was the biggest challenge facing the school system. About 15 percent said the problem was a lack of funding.