A majority of New York voters do not think Gov. Andrew Cuomo should step down amid two controversies that have engulfed his administration over the several weeks, a Quinnipiac University poll found on Thursday. 

The poll found 55% of New York voters believe the governor should remain in office, 40% back his resignation. 

The result, in the short term, potentially buoys Cuomo as he faces allegations of sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior leveled against him by three women. At the same time, Cuomo and his administration are under scrutiny for how the state handled and reported nursing home fatalities during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Crucially, Cuomo retains the support of Democratic voters: 74% say he should remain in office. The flip side is true for Republicans, with 70% calling for his resignation. Independent voters are more evenly split, with 52% backing resignation, 44% of those voters opposing it. 

But in the long term, things bode less well for the governor. New Yorkers by a larger margin of 59% to 36% believe Cuomo should not seek a fourth term, which he has signaled he will do. 

Voters are also split on his job approval, 45% approve, 46% disapprove. That marks a 30 percentage point drop in the college's poll from a year ago. In May of last year, voters approved of the governor's handling of his job, 72% to 24%. 

And voters are less enthusiastic about his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, falling from a whopping 81% approval in May to 56% approval in the survey released on Thursday. 

Voters by a margin of 59% to 27% are not satisfied with the governor's explanation of the sexual harassment allegations leveled against him by former aides Lindsey Boylan and Charlotte Bennett as well as Anna Ruch, a guest at a wedding the governor also attended. Cuomo has denied touching anyone inappropriately, but has acknowledged he sometimes attempts to make jokes in the workplace and apologized to anyone who may have been offended. 

The poll also found 75% of voters believe Cuomo did something wrong with nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Cuomo last month said his administration should have moved faster to release nursing home fatality data, but first responded to a federal inquiry on the issue. 

"From popular to precarious, Governor Andrew Cuomo's political standing is on shaky ground," said Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Mary Snow. "New Yorkers are not clamoring to have him step down at this stage, but they are signaling a willingness to show him to the exit door once his term is done."

The poll of 935 self-identified registered New York voters was conducted from March 2 to March 3. It has a margin of error of 3.2 percentage points.