{"id":40802236029,"date":"2012-04-18T10:28:00","date_gmt":"2012-04-18T14:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/2012\/04\/18\/gov-christie-poll-rating-differences\/"},"modified":"2021-01-25T11:22:05","modified_gmt":"2021-01-25T16:22:05","slug":"gov-christie-poll-rating-differences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/2012\/04\/18\/gov-christie-poll-rating-differences\/","title":{"rendered":"Gov. Christie Poll Rating Differences"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at\u00a0PolitickerNJ<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

There have been a couple of queries about Gov. Christie\u2019s poll ratings released by Monmouth University\/NJ Press Media<\/em><\/a> this week compared to the numbers put out by Quinnipiac University<\/a> last week.\u00a0 Among registered voters, Monmouth has the governor\u2019s positive job rating at 50% while Quinnipiac put it at 59%.<\/p>\n

Each organization\u2019s prior polls put the governor\u2019s approval at 55%.\u00a0 In other words, Quinnipiac zigged (up 4 points) while Monmouth zagged (down 5 points).\u00a0 Why?<\/p>\n

There have been 17 occasions over the past six years where Monmouth and Quinnipiac released New Jersey governor ratings within two weeks of one another.\u00a0 These most recent results mark the largest ever difference between the two.<\/p>\n

Since Chris Christie took office, the two organizations released three polls prior to today that were conducted within two weeks of one another.\u00a0 In each of those instances, the governor\u2019s job approval rating differed by exactly 3 points \u2013 in two instances the Quinnipiac number was higher, while it was lower in the other.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth taking a dive into the two polls\u2019 demographics to see if anything there accounts for the difference.\u00a0 Overall, the polls have very similar racial compositions, but Monmouth includes more cell phone interviews (19% compared to 12.5% for Quinnipiac).\u00a0 This probably leads to a somewhat younger voter group for Monmouth.\u00a0 In our most recent poll, 24% of the voter sample was under the age of 30.\u00a0 Quinnipiac did not release their age demographics, but past polls hovered between 18% and 20%.\u00a0 Younger voters tend to be more Democratic in their political leaning, so this could have an impact.<\/p>\n

In fact, there are notable differences in the partisan composition of the two samples.\u00a0 Monmouth\u2019s poll puts self-identified Democrats at 37% and Republicans at 23% \u2013 a 14 point difference.\u00a0 Quinnipiac\u2019s sample is 34% Democratic and 25% Republican \u2013 a smaller 9 point gap.<\/p>\n

Over the last 9 months, Quinnipiac released 6 New Jersey polls and Monmouth released 4.\u00a0 The Democratic advantage in Quinnipiac\u2019s sample ranged from 6 to 12 points during that time.\u00a0 Monmouth\u2019s Democratic edge was larger, but more stable at 13 to 14 points. New Jersey\u2019s voter rolls puts the registered partisan split at 33% Democratic to 20% Republican \u2013 a 13 point gap.<\/p>\n

During the past few months, Monmouth\u2019s voter sample ranged from 34% to 37% Democratic and 20% to 23% Republican.\u00a0 Quinnipiac\u2019s polls ranged from 32% to 35% Democratic and 23% to 27% Republican.\u00a0 That means Monmouth\u2019s sample tends to be 1 to 4 points more Democratic and a similar 0 to 3 points more Republican than the official voter rolls.\u00a0 Quinnipiac\u2019s partisan sample tends to range near the Democratic registration numbers \u2013 from 1 point below to 2 points above \u2013 but is consistently 3 to 7 points higher in its Republican share of registered voters.<\/p>\n

All this explains why Quinnipiac\u2019s gubernatorial ratings have been more \u201cRepublican\u201d than Monmouth\u2019s in 7 of the last 8 polls conducted in close proximity of one another.\u00a0 However, it doesn\u2019t explain why the job ratings diverged so much in their recent poll releases.<\/p>\n

So, we turn our attention to another culprit: the questionnaire. Both Monmouth and Quinnipiac use consistent question wording when rating the governor.\u00a0 Monmouth also makes sure the question appears in exactly the same spot on the questionnaire each time we conduct a non-election poll \u2013 for the record, that would be question number 2, after a general evaluation of the state of New Jersey.<\/p>\n

Quinnipiac, on the other hand plays around with the order in which they ask the governor\u2019s job rating question.\u00a0 In 8 polls over the past year, they asked Gov. Christie\u2019s job rating as the first question in 3 cases and the 3rd<\/sup> question in one case.\u00a0 For the remaining four polls, the governor\u2019s rating question was slotted from #10 and #13 in their questionnaire.<\/p>\n

When it was the first question, the governor\u2019s positive job rating was only 44% to 47%.\u00a0 At the number 3 slot, it was 53%.\u00a0 At #10 or later in the interview, it ranged from 55% to 59%.\u00a0 It’s worth noting that the lower poll numbers came early last year, and were either closer to or even lower than other polls conducted at that time.\u00a0 Hmmm.<\/p>\n

In the most recent Quinnipiac poll, one of the questions preceding Gov. Christie\u2019s rating presented him as a potential nominee for Vice President.\u00a0 In other words, the survey framed the governor as a national figure before asking voters to rate his job performance.\u00a0 Could this be why his rating among Republican voters in particular shot up to an astronomical 92%?<\/p>\n

Pollsters know that job approval ratings can be impacted by the context of a poll interview.\u00a0 That\u2019s why most pollsters try to place these key trend questions in the same place in every questionnaire.\u00a0 This increases our confidence that any changes in a politician\u2019s ratings are due to real shifts in opinion and not an artifact of questionnaire inconsistencies.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m willing to venture that first naming Chris Christie as Mitt Romney\u2019s potential running mate before asking New Jerseyans to rate their governor might have had a wee bit to do with the two polls\u2019 divergent trends.<\/p>\n

Other theories are most welcome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at\u00a0PolitickerNJ There have been a couple of queries about Gov. Christie\u2019s poll ratings released by Monmouth University\/NJ Press Media this week compared to the numbers put out by Quinnipiac University last week.\u00a0 Among registered voters, Monmouth has the governor\u2019s positive job rating at 50% while Quinnipiac put it at 59%. Each organization\u2019s prior polls […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":939,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40802236029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802236029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/939"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40802236029"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802236029\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40802244207,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802236029\/revisions\/40802244207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40802236029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40802236029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40802236029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}