Politics & Government

New Jersey Voters Still Favor Obama

A Stockton/Zogby poll finds a majority of voters in the state still approve of the president, and don't want to see Gov. Christie run for president in 2012.

A potential presidential debate between President Barack Obama and Gov. Chris Christie at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey doesn’t appeal to most voters in the state, although Obama is still popular in the State of New Jersey.

According to a recent Stockton/Zogby poll commissioned by the William J. Hughes Center for Public Policy at the Richard Stockon College of New Jersey, Obama has a 65.6 percent favorable or somewhat favorable rating among likely voters polled.

Obama is also favored over Christie in a hypothetical matchup. Voters polled chose Obama 51 percent of the time and Christie 33.5 percent of the time.

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Voters also disapprove of Christie running for president in 2012, with 68.8 percent of the voters somewhat or strongly disagreeing with a potential Christie presidential campaign.

However, New Jersey voters have a positive opinion of their governor, with 48.8 percent of those polled approving of Christie in general. However, opinion was split when it came to re-electing the governor, with 44.6 percent saying they would re-elect him, and 44.1 percent saying no.

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More than 1,000 likely New Jersey voters were polled between May 9 and 11. There is a margin of error of +/- 3.2 percent.

“We explored reasons as to why those with an unfavorable opinion of the Governor felt that way,” said Executive Director of the William J. Hughes Center for Public Policy, Sharon Schulman. “79.2 percent of the respondents did not like the way he treats the NJEA and teachers. This was evenly split among Democrats and Republicans. Other strong reasons were his policies, handling of the state budget and the way he treats unions. These results split among party lines, with Democrats having more unfavorable opinions than Republicans.”

Those polled were concerned with Christie’s confrontational style, although they agreed with his stance on increasing the amount of local and state employees, teachers and firefighters/police contributions to pension and health care. Most disagreed with increasing deductibles and co-pays on senior citizen health programs.

The findings were released the day after a . The college submitted a to host a presidential or vice presidential debate in 2012. It is one of 12 colleges that submitted a bid to host a debate, and four will be chosen.

Three will host a presidential debate, and one will host a vice presidential debate.

The four colleges that will serve as hosts will be announced in the fall.


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