Qpac: Too much familiarity leads to discontent

by: Thurman Hart

Wed Jun 11, 2008 at 02:05:09 PM EDT

If the election were held today, Frank Lautenberg would win 47-38 over Dick Zimmer - and I think that margin may even increase in the next five months.  Right now, Zimmer is basically unknown, with sixty-seven percent of respondents saying they don't know enough about him to have an opinion.  That includes fifty-six percent of Republicans, who just picked this guy in their primary. Even more amazing is that twenty-six percent of the electorate doesn't know enough about Jon Corzine to have an opinion - including twenty-nine percent of Democrats.

The good news for Jon Corzine is that only eleven percent of people don't know if they like him or not.  It's all bad news from there, though.

This is pretty close to the abysmal ratings for the state legislature.  Disapprovers of our state lawmakers outnumber approvers by more than two-to-one 57-25.  Both the Lege and the Governor appear to be pulled down by the general level of dissatisfaction in the state.  Only thirty-one percent of respondents said they were "very satisfied" or "somewhat satisfied", with only three percent being "very satisfied".  Sixty-eight percent are eithe "somewhat dissatisfied" or "very dissatisfied". This is largely unchanged since February.

The problem is that half of respondents feel that no change has been made since Jon Corzine took office in 2006 - while thirty-nine percent feel the state is worse off now.  Only ten percent think we are better off.  This represents a leveling off of the slide in those who think we are better off, but the trend of people moving from "the same" to "worse" continues.  In Feb., ten percent said we were better, thirty-five said we were worse, and fifty-three said we were the same.

Bad news for the GOP, fifty-two percent of respondents said that the emails between Corzine and Carla Katz, which the GOP spent an entire year getting a favorable legal ruling to peek at, say that they don't care aobut the email.  Equally bad for Corzine, however, is that fifty-two percent think he has bungled the budget.  Sixty-six percent say the budget is "very serious" and twenty-nine percent say it is "somewhat serious".  

I'll end this with a poll - let's see how Blue Jerseyans compare to Qpac'ers.