Another day, another poll. This time our friends from Quinnipiac are weighing in for the month of May with a slew of new information to pour over. This time, very little of it was surprising, until you look at the sample demographics.
Quinnipiac finds that Governor Christie is still very popular at home. In fact, he not only has better favorables than President Obama, but he has a better job approval rating too! While 41 percent of New Jersey voters have an unfavorable opinion of Obama, 39 percent are sour on Christie. That two point gap is matched by a one point gap on the favorables side, 54 and 53 percent respectively.
On the job approval front the difference becomes more stark. Governor Christie has a 57 percent approval rating, beating out President Obama’s by 4 percent. Christie’s numbers are only down 2 points from last months poll, showing some stability in the high 50s. History shows that most New Jersey Governors can only dream of these kinds of numbers.
In the US Senate race, things still look bad for Senator Menendez when his incumbency is taken into account. In a poll like this one Menendez surely should be breaking 50 percent, but he is yet again embarrassed by respondents.
Don’t get me wrong, Menendez still leads Joe Kyrillos by 9 points at 44 – 35 percent. However, that is more a reflection of his failure than anything else. Joe Kyrillos is still largely an unknown candidate, 75 percent of voters did not know enough about him to form an opinion, and yet over a third would still take him over what they know and have had in office for the last six years.
When digging into the numbers, each candidate receives about 80 percent of his own parties vote. Independents make the difference, and it is close. Menendez leads with independents 36 – 33 percent. Those are numbers that should make any incumbent cringe in a Presidential year when more of these people will be turning out to vote.
So this Quinnipiac Poll was far from surprising right? Well, not when you consider the sample. In no uncertain terms, this poll heavily oversampled Democrats and under sampled Republicans. In New Jersey, the Independent vote is higher than both the two parties, and its by more than a few points. This poll almost puts Democrats and Independents at parity while leaving the GOP in the dust. 36 percent were Independents, 34 percent were Democrats, and a measly 25% were Republicans.
When this is considered it is actually quite amazing that Governor Christie is able to maintain the numbers that he does. It also makes President Obama’s numbers far less impressive.
