Look at how differently awful NJ Gov Christie polls are spun versus how Obama's are reported

President Obama has been mostly somewhat above 50% and occasionally drifting somewhat below - with a few outliers. The media has mostly reported when it went down - which could have lead some to thing he has continually fallen.

But, here is what they say of Christie:
"In spite of the battle with educators, Christie's job approval rating among registered voters stands at 42 percent, with 44 percent disapproving. That compares favorably to his predecessor, Jon Corzine, who had a 34 percent approval versus 37 percent disapproval rating at the same point of his first year in office."

http://www.dailyrecord.com/article/20100413/UPDATES01/100412143/1005/NEWS01/Poll++Christie+takes+most+blame+for+teacher+layoffs+%E2%80%94+not+unions+or+school+boards

The fact is that saying he was better than Corzine at this point is almost like dividing by zero, it doesn't same anything about the numerator (or the person being compared) At this point in Corzine's term, he was dealing with the story of his negotiating with a top union boss, who was his former girlfriend, who he had given millions to when they split. It was also soon after an election where his ex-wife made a commercial against him.

The fact is that being at 42 percent now is not good. Sure, he can regained popularity, but his electoral history was that after he won a Morris County freeholders'seat, the next election the republicans put up 4 candidates for the three seats - and he lost in the primary.

I wonder if many people in NJ have buyer's remorse? Still, the guy in VA seems more of a nutball and even worse.

One cause might be that he attacked Corzine hard on eliminating the Homestead Rebate for those making over $75,000 because of budget problems - Corzine has cut it for everyone. Worse, he really cut state aid to education - which has led to many layoffs in nearly every town in the state. The worst think is it looks like he enjoys this confrontation - there was little attempt to work behind the scenes with the teachers' union. (In addition, he appointed Brett Schundler, a pretty conservative Republican as head of education.)

In NJ, the phenomena was like MA, it was VERY hard to convince many core Democrats to come out for Corzine. The truth was if Corzine weren't so wealthy and so on record that he would use those millions to win, he would very likely have had a primary challenge - and lost. Codey, a former acting governor, likely would have easily won. With his approval ratings, it was irresponsible for Corzine to run.

Media would be propping up his falling ratings. Now another Dem will have an even bigger mess to clean up.

I was surprised in a recent poll that Florio is beginning to move up from the bottom - not far, but significantly. He is a Democrat, who has born the burden of having cleaned up for his predecessor. When he came into office, the state's books were far worse than previously known and the state was facing a NJ SC ruling that education had to be "thorough and efficient". The later required a state wide tax - as there was no way to continue with each town using just its property tax to fund schools. His predecessor - the still very loved Governor Kean.

The RWers CLAIM the media is liberal so they can justify their ignoring of any real news that might trickle out from any real reporters left in the business.