{"id":40802236107,"date":"2011-06-29T13:15:00","date_gmt":"2011-06-29T17:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/2011\/06\/29\/christie-slipping-among-independents\/"},"modified":"2021-01-25T11:22:06","modified_gmt":"2021-01-25T16:22:06","slug":"christie-slipping-among-independents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/2011\/06\/29\/christie-slipping-among-independents\/","title":{"rendered":"Christie Slipping Among Independents"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at PolitickerNJ<\/strong><\/i><\/p>\n

A new player entered New Jersey\u2019s crowded polling market and confirmed the recent decline in Governor Christie\u2019s approval ratings.\u00a0 The big story of this poll is his possible slippage among independents voters.<\/p>\n

The latest poll<\/a> was conducted for Bloomberg news by Selzer\u00a0 & Co, a well-respected Iowa polling firm with a pretty solid track record polling their home state\u2019s hard to pin down presidential caucus.<\/p>\n

The poll found Christie has an \u201cupside down\u201d job approval rating among all adults \u2013 44% approve to 51% disapprove.\u00a0 This is in line with the Quinnipiac Poll<\/a>\u2019s 44% to 47% results earlier this month and the Monmouth University\/NJ Press Media Poll<\/a>\u2019s 47% to 49% result last month.<\/p>\n

One of the first things I look for with new polls that differ from other findings is the partisan composition of the sample.\u00a0 Unfortunately, not every pollster releases this \u2013 although any reputable pollster should have no problem including this important information with their poll results.\u00a0\u00a0 Fortunately, Selzer did include this data (for both their weighted and unweighted samples no less \u2013 kudos to them!).<\/p>\n

Their weighted sample of partisan identifiers (i.e. \u201cIn politics as of today, do you consider yourself a D\/R\/I?\u201d) splits 30% Democrat, 24% Republican and 44% independent.\u00a0 That 6 point Democratic advantage is a much narrower gap than most other polls show.\u00a0 My tracking of the party identification question over the past year finds it hovering somewhere between a 12 and 14 point Democratic advantage \u2013 similar to the partisan split on the registered voter rolls.\u00a0 If anything, this latest poll should be more advantageous to the Republican governor.<\/p>\n

So why the big dip in Christie\u2019s approvals when compared to Monmouth and Quinnipiac?<\/p>\n

The biggest difference in the three polls is an apparent erosion of support among politically independent residents.\u00a0 [Note: there is some danger in comparing sub-samples across different polls due to different question wording and weighting techniques, but the results bear watching.<\/em>]<\/p>\n

In Monmouth\u2019s May poll, Christie garnered positive reviews among this important voting bloc by a decent 53% to 41% margin.\u00a0 In Quinnipiac\u2019s poll a few weeks later, this edge was a much narrower 47% to 44%.\u00a0 The Selzer poll now shows independents evenly divided on the governor\u2019s job performance \u2013 47% approve to 47% disapprove.<\/p>\n

There are some caveats for those concerned only with how this will effect Christie’s re-election chances.\u00a0 These polls sampled all adults or registered voters.\u00a0 The Selzer poll does include a breakdown for those saying they are very likely to vote in this year’s legislative election.\u00a0 But since this “likely voter” group includes 62% of all adults \u2013 as opposed to a more realistic 20-25% \u2013 it doesn’t deserve much attention.\u00a0 At any rate, it’s too soon to predict who is likely to vote in 2013 when Christie is up for re-election.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also important to keep in mind that all these polls were conducted before the governor\u2019s pension and benefit victory and a poll next week could produce very different results.\u00a0 [Although just released, the Selzer poll was actually conducted last week.<\/em>]<\/p>\n

But the bottom line is that Christie\u2019s job approval has been wavering \u2013 in spite of Piers Morgan\u2019s claims* to the contrary during his obsequious CNN interview \u2013 and independents hold the key.<\/p>\n

[*By the way, check out the Star-Ledger\u2019s terrific new PolitifactNJ<\/a> fact checking site.]<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at PolitickerNJ A new player entered New Jersey\u2019s crowded polling market and confirmed the recent decline in Governor Christie\u2019s approval ratings.\u00a0 The big story of this poll is his possible slippage among independents voters. The latest poll was conducted for Bloomberg news by Selzer\u00a0 & Co, a well-respected Iowa polling firm with a pretty […]<\/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-40802236107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802236107","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=40802236107"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802236107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40802237298,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802236107\/revisions\/40802237298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40802236107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40802236107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40802236107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}