Christie's approval rating at 52 percent in poll

TRENTON - Just more than half the New Jersey voters in a poll released yesterday said they approved of the job Gov. Christie was doing.

In the Fairleigh Dickinson-PublicMind poll, 52 percent of respondents said they supported the new governor's policies. Republicans approved by a ratio of 10-1. Thirty-eight percent of Democrats said they approved, and 33 percent said they disapproved. Among independent voters, 43 percent said they approved, and 17 percent said they disapproved.

Respondents in the public pension system were less kind. Thirty-five percent said they approved of Christie, but 46 percent said they did not. Asked about public pensions, eight in 10 of all respondents said they supported requiring public employees, including teachers, to contribute some of their salary toward health benefits and capping salaries for top public employees at $200,000. Seven in 10 said they supported capping payouts at retirement for unused vacation and sick time.

The telephone poll of 801 registered voters was taken Feb. 23 through Monday and had a sampling error margin of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. - AP