Mayor Bloomberg’s popularity ratings have taken their deepest dive since 2003, with voters outside Manhattan complaining two months after the bungled Christmas snowstorm that he’s too focused on the city’s wealthiest borough.

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A Quinnipiac University poll out today reported that only 39 percent of voters approve of the job the mayor is doing, while 51 percent do not.
Those were his worst poll numbers since November, 2003, when voters were pummeled by increases in property, income and sales taxes and Bloomberg’s approval rating sunk to 37-51 percent. In November 2010 — before the storm– the mayor enjoyed a respectable 55-35 percent grade.
“Is it the snow, the third-term blahs, the weekends away, the presidential chatter? Whatever the explanation, Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s once-upon-a-time stretch of 70-plus job approval numbers has gone south. This is his first negative number since 2003,” said poll director Maurice Carroll.
Part of the explanation could be found in the outer boroughs, where the mayor has never fared as well as in his base of Manhattan and where residents screamed loudest about the botched snow clean-up after Christmas.
But this time the differences couldn’t be starker.
By a margin of 70-22 percent, voters said Bloomberg favors Manhattan over the other four boroughs. Manhattan voters still like Mike, by 55-34 percent. But he’s persona non grata in Staten Island, where his approval rating was a dismal 27-66 percent. Ditto for The Bronx, where it was only slightly better at 35-49 percent; Brooklyn at 34-58 percent and Queens at 35-55 percent.
The ratings for Schools Chancellor Cathie Black — who lives around the corner from the mayor on the Upper East Side — were also in the tank at 17-49 percent approval, with 34 percent of voters undecided.
In one bit of good news, voters declared by a 72-25 percent margin that what the mayor does in his private time is no one’s business but his. But they also demanded by an overwhelming 84-13 percent that he announce who’s in charge when he’s away.
The Quinnipiac poll of 1,115 voters was conducted March 8-14. It has margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percent.
NYP