NJ Voters Maintain Dim View of President

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Tabular Results
Survey Details

Only one in four New Jersey voters say the country is headed in the right direction while nearly two-thirds (64%) say it's on the wrong track. According to the most recent results of Fairleigh Dickinson University's PublicMind Poll, women are more pessimistic than men over the direction of the country: only 17% of women say the country is headed in the right direction while almost twice that number of men (30%) say the country is headed in the right direction.

Garden State voters likewise maintain a dim view of the president's job performance. Only one in four rate the president's performance as “good” or “excellent,” while 30% say “only fair” and 45% give him a grade of “poor.”

In all, 60% of New Jersey voters flatly disapprove of the way the president is handling his job while just 30% approve. Only one in four say the US involvement in Iraq is going well while 70% say it is not.

“The president continues to be judged by his foreign policy decisions, which he said himself would define his administration,” said Peter Woolley, director of the poll and a political scientist at Fairleigh Dickinson University. “Though the president has sought new counsel on Iraq and is faced with a new majority in both houses of Congress, the public still puts the problem squarely at his door.” However, Woolley also noted that the last interviews for this poll were completed on Sunday night, January 7, and do not reflect any public reaction to the US military action in Somalia.

The president's low marks in New Jersey reflect the national trend observed early in the new year. For example, the first CBS News poll of 2007 showed the president with his lowest approval rating yet.

The PublicMind poll of 611 randomly selected registered voters statewide was conducted by telephone from January 2 through January 7 and has a margin of error of +/- 4 percentage points.

 

Contacts:

Peter Woolley 973.670.3239

For more information, please call (973) 443-8661.



Copyright © 2007, Fairleigh Dickinson University. All rights reserved. FDU PublicMind Poll [Latest update 070110]