FDU PublicMind - May 3, 2001 Survey

Franks vs. McGreevey A Dead Heat
McGreevey - Wide Lead Over Schundler

Fairleigh Dickinson University's PublicMind inaugural poll reveals that New Jerseyans could well be in for a close gubernatorial contest this November - but only if former House member Bob Franks is the Republican nominee.

Although Franks is a newcomer to the race for the GOP nomination, he fared considerably better than his main rival, Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler, in a head-to-head competition against presumptive Democrat nominee Jim McGreevey. Among our sample of 800 likely voters, a race between Franks and McGreevey resulted in a statistical dead heat, with each candidate drawing support from 42 percent of our survey respondents. (The rest were undecided.) In contrast, Schundler did considerably worse than Franks in a head-to-head contest against McGreevey, losing to McGreevey by a 17 percent margin.

Franks' advantage over Schundler in a contest against McGreevey was evident among voters across the partisan spectrum. Among independents, Franks ran slightly ahead of McGreevey, though the margin is well within the survey's margin of error. By contrast, Schundler lost to McGreevey among independents by nearly 20 percentage points. Franks also did better than Schundler at both holding GOP voters and attracting Democratic voters.

Our survey also provides a useful snapshot of how New Jersey voters view the three gubernatorial candidates. Voters were considerably more likely to view Franks and McGreevey favorably than unfavorably, though Franks' ratio of favorable-to-unfavorable ratings (52% to 13%) was somewhat larger than McGreevey's (46% to 16%). In contrast, voters familiar with Schundler were, relatively speaking, only somewhat more likely to view him favorably than unfavorably (22% to 14%). Naturally, GOP voters were more likely to rate Franks favorably than McGreevey (64% to 37%), whereas Democratic voters were more likely to view McGreevey with favor than Franks (54% to 42%). Interestingly, however, GOP voters were more likely to view McGreevey with favor than Schundler (37% to 32%).

Our survey suggests that one of Schundler's biggest problems is his lack of name recognition. Nearly 40 percent of the likely voters in our sample had never heard of Schundler; even many Republicans (31%) in our sample were unfamiliar with him. Both Franks and McGreevey, by contrast, had considerably higher name recognition than Schundler among our sample of New Jersey voters. Only 10 percent of our survey respondents had not heard of Franks; only 12 percent were unfamiliar with McGreevey. These results suggest that Franks and McGreevey are reaping the benefits of having run strong (if ultimately unsuccessful) statewide campaigns in the recent past.

The Fairleigh Dickinson poll also provides some insight about the issues New Jersey voters want to hear discussed during the campaign. Topping the list among voters of all partisan stripes is the issue of taxes and spending, though males were significantly more likely than females to rank taxes and spending as a priority campaign issue. Education was also a concern for many New Jersey voters - although significantly more females than males rated it as one of the most important issues for the candidates to address. Additionally, more than 20 percent of voters in our survey want to hear the candidates address environmental issues, but Democrats and Independents were significantly more likely to view the environment as an important issue than were Republicans. Despite the attention they've been given lately, government corruption and racial profiling were a top priority for only a handful of voters in our sample. Indeed, only 6 percent of likely voters chose government corruption as the most important issue for the gubernatorial candidates to address, and only 3 percent of voters viewed racial profiling as a priority campaign issue.

Poll Analysis by Fairleigh Dickinson Professor, Dr. Bruce Larson

Dr. Bruce Larson can be reached at (973) 443-8727