FDU PublicMind - January 14, 2006 Release

Nation still on the Wrong Track say Garden State Voters

What's in worse shape than New Jersey? According to New Jersey voters, it's the rest of the country. A majority (55%)of the state's voters continue to say the country is on the wrong track while less than a third (31%) say the nation is headed in the right direction. (By comparison, only 48% of voters say the state is on the wrong track and 34% say the state is headed in the right direction.)

According to the most recent Fairleigh Dickinson University PublicMind poll, New Jersey voters continue to give the president poor job ratings. Just a third (34%) rate the President's performance as “good” or “excellent” while two-thirds (65%) rate his performance as “only fair” or “poor.” His numbers are little changed from the autumn campaign season when he was reluctant to campaign in New Jersey and Democrats ran TV ads linking him to the Republican candidate for governor. In fact, almost two-thirds of Democrats rate his performance as poor while another quarter give him a grade of “only fair.”

Perceptions of the US military action in Iraq are also little changed. About half (48%) say the effort is going “not too well” or “not well at all.” But 45% say the US action is going fairly well or very well. Views of the American military engagement differ significantly by partisanship with two-thirds of Democrats concluding the effort is going “not too well” or “not well at all” and two-thirds of Republicans concluding the effort is going “fairly well” or “very well.”

A majority of voters (57%) also continue to say that going to war in Iraq was a mistake while 35% say it was the right thing to do. Two-thirds of Republican voters say it was the right thing, but 83% of Democratic voters say it was mistake. “People used to say that partisan politics stopped at the shoreline,” said Peter Woolley, director of the poll, “but evaluations of our military action in Iraq have been an exception to that rule.”

The PublicMind poll of 707 registered voters statewide was conducted by telephone from January 3 through January 10 and has a margin of error of +/- 4 percentage points.

Poll Analysis

Contacts:

Peter Woolley 973.670.3239
or
Krista Jenkins 973.443.8390

Radio actuality line: (201) 692-2846.

For more information, please call (201) 692-7032.