New Jersey voters approve of how Gov. Chris Christie has been handling the Superstorm Sandy recovery, according to a new Quinnipiac University survey, and only a few say they have changed their summer vacation plans because of the storm.
"Garden State voters flunk FEMA and insurance companies for their Sandy recovery work," said Maurice Carroll, assistant director of the
Quinnipiac University Poll. "And — in a New Jersey sort of defiance — practically everyone says they're not letting the storm's depredations change their summer vacation plans."
The poll revealed that 51 percent of the 1,356 New Jersey voters surveyed from April 2-7 approve of how Christie is handling the recovery efforts, compared to 42 percent who disapprove.
Insurance companies got very low marks, with 22 percent saying the companies' Sandy work was good or excellent, while 63 percent said the work was not so good or poor.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency also flunked in the poll, with 39 percent of respondents saying the agency's efforts are good or excellent, and 52 percent saying not so good or poor.
Respondents were almost evenly divided on the state government's work on Sandy recovery, with 47 percent approving and 48 percent disapproving. But they approved of their local government's efforts, with 63 percent approving and 23 percent disapproving.
The poll's results were markedly different than a similar survey, conducted by
Monmouth University in February, when storm victims said they were dissatisfied with the speed of the state and federal recovery efforts.
In that survey, 64 percent of the people who have applied for state assistance under the New Jersey Stronger program were not happy with the recovery timeline.
Only 36 percent were satisfied with the pace of the assistance they had received, according to the poll of 854 New Jersey residents who had suffered serious damage to their homes in the 2012 storm and had applied for state assistance.
They were particularly disappointed about the lack of information they were getting from authorities about what stage their applications had reached in the program, according to the February poll.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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