Two New Jersey Polls

by: Hopeful

Wed Feb 09, 2011 at 02:32:17 PM EST

What a happy day for New Jersey political junkies: We got releases of both the Monmouth University/Gannett New Jersey Press Media Poll PDF, plus or minus 3.5 percent) and the Quinnipiac poll (plus or minus 2.7 percent.) They agree quite well.

It's a pretty good day for Governor Christie too, with favorable-unfavorable job ratings of of 49-41 (Monmouth), or 52-40 (Quinnipiac.) amongst New Jersey registered voters. That's great agreement. You may have seen a Republican "internal poll" being touted recently; as usual, it was about 7 points more favorable to those releasing it than a neutral party. In Quinnipac, 51% say Christie's first year is mainly a success and only 35% say mainly a failure; In Monmouth, they find 25% think he has "major accomplishments", 39% "minor accomplishments," and 34% say "no real accomplishments." Same thing, different phrasing.

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Hopeful :: Two New Jersey Polls

Quinnipiac finds the State Assembly at 32-45 and the State Senate at 34-46.Monmouth more sensibly just asks about the legislature and gets 30-44. Those are all the same, pretty lousy, and not all that meaningful. Democrats lead but look weaker in the Q generic poll than in the previous years' results, but we'll see if that becomes a trend.

National pollsters tell us President Obama has been trending upwards and indeed he's at 55-41 in the Q poll, up five from late last year. I'd expect numbers later in the week from Monmouth for him. So let's hold off on the federal officials until then.

Monmouth goes out and gets letter grades rating "the Christie administration" in various areas.

Where is Christie vulnerable? Providing "property tax relief," usually our top issue, does look like a weakness. Monmouth finds only 24% of voters give him an A or B there. The rest are C's, D's and F's. That's a lot worse than the "controlling costs and cutting waste" grades. Voters can distinguish being the two, and when their property taxes keep increasing it'll be even more of a problem. Similarly only 32% give him good grades on "improving the schools."

51% overall, and 35% "the most", plan to blame the governor if property tax reform is not passed. (On the other hand, he's not on the ballot this year, and lots of people plan to blame the legislature too!)

Quinnipiac will release their polling on specific budget measures -- cut schools? raise taxes? -- tomorrow.