Corbett doing well, poll says - in comparison

The good news for Gov. Corbett on his 100th day in office: A new Quinnipiac University poll shows him doing better than some other rookie Republican governors. The bad news: He may have a problem with women.

In the poll, released Wednesday, 39 percent of voters said they liked the job Corbett was doing, while 37 percent didn't and 24 percent had no opinion. That contrasts with a February poll that counted disapproval at 11 percent.

Disapproval ratings for other new GOP faces such as Florida's Rick Scott and Ohio's John Kasich top 50 percent. "Although [Corbett's] numbers are not impressive by traditional standards, they are a good deal better than many of the new Republican governors around the country who are offering a similar approach of no new taxes and large spending cuts," said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Connecticut university's polling institute.

Forty-three percent of men polled gave Corbett a thumbs-up - but the same percentage of women gave him a thumbs-down. "He has a gender gap on his job approval and a gender gap on his proposed budget cuts," Brown said. "Women find the cuts unfair, while men are divided on whether they are fair."

More than 60 percent opposed Corbett's plan to slash spending for universities in order to balance the state's budget. The survey was one of several recent polls that found majority support for a tax on natural gas extracted from the Marcellus Shale, which Corbett opposes.

The telephone survey of 1,366 registered voters was taken in the week that ended Monday. The margin of error is plus or minus 2.7 percentage points.

- Amy Worden