BUFFALO, N.Y. — In front of a supportive hometown crowd at Kleinhans Music Hall in Buffalo, Gov. Kathy Hochul, D-NY, got a standing ovation when she mentioned a new Buffalo Bills stadium.

The $600 million New York state will contribute toward construction is the headline of funding earmarked for Western New York, but across the state, a Siena poll released Monday confirms the deal is far less popular outside of the room at Kleinhans.

"This is a case where it was polled,” Hochul said. “People tend to like what's in their area, not what's outside their area, but I feel it was a good deal for the taxpayers. We worked hard to get that accomplished, and as a result, the Buffalo Bills will be here and 10,000 jobs which were critically important to this region.”

The governor believes the negative polling results are partially because some media outlets have not accurately depicted the state's share. But she also believes other projects that involve major public spending, like transportation projects on Long Island, would also be unpopular outside of the population they impact most directly.

"I would think if we poll test all of them, except for the immediate beneficiary in that neighborhood or that community or patrons or fans, the answers are going to all be the same," Hochul said. "This is what I have to deal with as governor. I have a large state with a lot of different interests."

Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz, D, who also was involved in negotiations, defended Hochul as well, pushing back on the idea the funding is a subsidy to the team's billionaire owners because the state will own the facility and the idea ownership would have built the stadium even with less or no public contribution.

"Maybe they would, but they'd probably do it in Orlando and San Antonio, and perhaps the people in New York City and Montauk and Riverhead and Long Island don't care about that," Poloncarz said.

Finally, Hochul points to the fact more than two-thirds of the state's contribution came from back payments from the Seneca Nation of Indians — money she argues was not from taxpayers and derived almost exclusively from Western New Yorkers.