Governor Christie’s job rating has slipped slightly with Jersey residents, but it’s still quite strong.

Governor Chris Christie
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Patrick Murray, Director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute says a new Monmouth University- New Jersey Press Media Poll finds the Governor “gets a 51 percent approve to 35 percent disapprove among everybody in New Jersey – if it’s just registered voters, it’s 50 percent to 38 percent.”

He says that’s down 5 points on the registered voter number from February- but it doesn’t appear to be a trend at this point because the poll shows a lot of positives for Christie as well, but “the gender gap is widening for the Governor – it disappeared back in October, but it’s reappeared again – 59 percent of men approve of Governor Christie, just 43 percent of women approve.”

At the same time, Murray says “public worker households who have been against Christie for pretty much all of his tenure here are starting to split- we see 44 percent approve to 43 percent disapprove among people who live in public worker households.”

He adds the poll shows “there are many positives – his grades from New Jerseyans on some key issues that are important to the state have gone up -he gets good grades- 47 percent give him an A or a B on controlling costs and cutting waste- just 21 percent give him a D or an F…and on education he’s actually doing pretty well – he’s got 37 percent who give him an A or a B, compared to 30 percent who give him a D or an F – and that’s the first time in Governor Christie’s tenure where we see the good grades outnumbering the bad grades.”

Murray also says the Governor does better than he has in the past on property taxes, but they’re still not all that great – “we find that 28 percent of New Jerseyans give him an A or a B, versus 37 percent who give him a D or an F – that’s one area in New Jersey – and it’s the number one issue in New Jersey that the Governor still needs to work on.”

He also points out the Governor has proposed a 10 percent across the board income tax cut, while Steve Sweeney, the Senate President, has proposed a 10 percent property tax credit – and when people were asked which one they prefer, “it’s a no-brainer for New Jerseyans- it’s 2 to 1 – 61 percent to 32 percent who prefer the property tax credit over the income tax cut.”

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