Christie’s Approval Rating Surges In Wake Of Hurricane Sandy
Not surprisingly, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is getting high marks in the wake of Hurricane Sandy:
(Reuters) – New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s approval rating has leaped 19 percentage points since superstorm Sandy slammed the state, as voters by a wide margin applaud his response to the crisis, a Rutgers-Eagleton poll said on Wednesday.
The Republican governor, who will face re-election in 2013 and is considered a contender for the U.S. presidency in 2016, has a 67 percent favorability rating among registered voters in the state, up from 48 percent in October.
The boost is notable because Christie’s ratings have stayed steady between 44 and 50 percent for his nearly three years in office, according to David Redlawsk, director of the Rutgers-Eagleton Poll.
“Throughout the governor’s term, we’ve had little movement in his ratings. This just blows that out of the water,” he said.
Christie, a Republican star, angered some within his party by offering strong praise for Democratic President Barack Obama’s storm response in the days after Sandy and just before Election Day. Critics say Christie’s praise may have helped Obama’s re-election.
The poll is the second survey in as many days to show that voters had an overwhelmingly positive response to Christie’s response to the storm, which devastated the New Jersey shoreline and left large swaths of the region without power.
A Quinnipiac University poll on Tuesday found almost nine in 10 New Yorkers gave Christie top ratings for his performance.
These numbers are temporary, of course, just as any leader’s are after a disaster, but it will nonetheless be interesting to see what kind of impact all of this has on the slowly developing race for 2013 in the Garden State.
vs.
If you put party before governing you’re on the wrong side of the electorate. I hope that Republicans figure this out pretty soon.
When did Christie switch parties?
Not that the chattering classes even will remember this, much less care about it, but when you juxtapose the ways in which Christie has handled Sandy’s aftermath with the utterly disgraceful ways in which Kathleen Blanco responded to Katrina the dichotomy is so stark it boggles the mind. Partisan elections most definitely do have serious consequences.
As far as Christie and ’13 are concerned, obviously his approval ratings won’t stay at these elevated levels but in any event he can’t be viewed as the underdog in his reelection campaign. At worst for Christie it’ll be a coin flip contest, I would surmise.
For ’16, assuming he wins next year, Christie’s major problem, like any sentient governor type, will be the bad demographics of the GOP’s primary selectorate. Iowa and South Carolina so early the process is bad news for a guy like Christie. Romney managed to overcome it, granted, but Romney was running against a historically poor field.
This just in…Governing is actually very popular with the electorate.
Platitudes about small Government are just so much nonsense…ideological wet-dreaming.
Small Government gets you Katrina and the BP Oil Spill and Enron.
We live in a world where we count on the Government for things like Medicare, Defense, Education…and in Christies case…a FEMA that actually functions.
Foolish dogma about limited Government and low taxes has finally managed to bring this nation to it’s economic knees. The promised nirvana is not happening. Nor will it. A decade of historically low taxes has not led to any sort of economic boon. Shrinking Government has dramatically held back the economic recovery we are now struggling with.
We need to finally start having an intelligent conversation about Smart Government.
The fools who have been criticizing Christie need to just get out of the way.
See, Republicans, you do have a future.
You just have to take the task of governing seriously. That means dealing with problems instead of accusing scientists, the media, and pollsters of fabricating them.
There…ftfy…
I guess Matt Drudge’s War on Chris Christie isn’t going so well.
If this lasts, I think we’ll see Corey Booker pass up a run against him for governor in 2013 in favor of a run for US Senate in 2014.
I don’t foresee Christie being competitive in the2016 Presidential primaries in the Republican Party as currently constituted. He would stand a better chance as a Democrat.
Maybe if there was a massive rejection of the Republican Party in the 2014 elections.
“surges”? did you really mean that or is that just ironic? it does take something catastrophic sometimes to enable leaders to show their mettle.