Poll: Christie cruising to re-election

TRENTON, N.J., March 26 (UPI) -- New Jersey voters overwhelmingly approve of the job Gov. Chris Christie is doing, eight months before he faces re-election, a poll released Tuesday suggests.

Quinnipiac University said 70 percent of voters approve of Christie's job performance. Just 23 percent disapproved.

Furthermore, the Republican governor's ratings are equally strong when compared to a likely gubernatorial challenger in November, Democratic state Sen. Barbara Buono, the pollsters found. New Jersey voters prefer Christie 60 percent to 25 percent in a head-to-head matchup.

Christie's approval rating has been above 70 percent for the last four months in the Quinnipiac survey.

"New Jersey voters rate Gov. Christopher Christie's performance in Trenton at his now-routine astronomical level. And they think he deserves re-election in November," said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

Buono, by contrast, lacks name recognition, with 79 percent of respondents saying they didn't have enough information to form an opinion about her.

"Who is that woman? Everybody knows Christie and hardly anyone knows Sen. Barbara Buono, even though she's running an energetic, endorsement-rich campaign," Carroll said.

The poll surveyed 1,129 registered voters on both land lines and cellphones from March 19-24 with a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points.