Sherrill's 100-Day Approval Rating: Rutgers Poll Results

Mikie Sherrill is roughly 100 days into her governorship, and New Jersey hasn’t fully made up its mind about her yet. That’s the headline finding from the latest Rutgers-Eagleton Poll, which shows the governor with a 44% favorable rating against 29% unfavorable. About a quarter of residents still have no opinion, and 3% say they don’t know who she is.

Not bad. Not great.

Her approval numbers track closely with favorability: 45% approve of the job she’s doing, 29% disapprove, and 26% are still on the fence. Ashley Koning, assistant research professor and director of the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, noted that the numbers are consistent with where previous governors stood at the same point in their terms.

“Barely three months have passed since Gov. Sherrill has taken office, and while we see her continue to garner more positive reactions than negative ones, many of her constituents are still forming an opinion,” Koning said.

The poll asked residents to grade Sherrill on a standard A-through-F scale. Thirteen percent gave her an A, 30% a B, 19% a C, 11% a D, and 14% an F. Fourteen percent weren’t sure. Among those who’ve formed a view, roughly 6 in 10 hold a favorable impression, which Koning described as “solid baseline numbers.”

The trouble spots are obvious and they’re the same issues that have dominated kitchen-table conversations across Central Jersey and the Shore for years: taxes and the cost of living. On affordability, 30% gave Sherrill an F. On taxes, 28% did. Those are the two categories where her grades sink the furthest, and they’re also the two issues New Jerseyans consistently rank as most important. Only 5% gave her an A on cost of living, 6% on taxes. For anyone who’s watched property tax bills climb while commuting on a NJ Transit line that’s perpetually late, those numbers won’t be surprising.

She fares better on education, public safety, and transportation, where grades trend toward the middle and fewer residents hand out F’s. Still, “average across the board” isn’t exactly a mandate.

The Rutgers poll tells a more cautious story than a separate Fairleigh Dickinson University poll released earlier this month, which put Sherrill’s approval at 58%. Methodological differences between polls can produce real gaps, and the Rutgers-Eagleton survey is widely considered the state’s most rigorous ongoing measure of public opinion.

One thing worth keeping in mind: the Rutgers poll was conducted in late March, before Sherrill signed legislation on April 8. Whatever bounce or backlash came from that signing won’t show up here. The next round of numbers may look different.

Koning put the longer view plainly: “No governor can move the needle on the issues that matter most to New Jerseyans in just 100 days, especially against the backdrop of a hyper partisan political climate and kitchen-table concerns like cost of living that have been building for years and will not yield overnight.”

That’s true. But Sherrill came into office with expectations built on a congressional career and a campaign that leaned hard into competence and affordability. Voters in Woodbridge, Edison, and Freehold didn’t send her to Trenton to get average marks on the two issues they care about most. The political grace period is real, but it’s also finite.

ROI-NJ first reported the Rutgers-Eagleton findings alongside the broader context of how her numbers compare to recent predecessors.

The governor’s office has time. Spring budget negotiations in Trenton will do more to define her first year than any poll taken before summer. How she handles property tax relief, school funding, and whatever transit crisis NJ Transit manufactures next will matter far more than a March survey.

For now, she’s where most governors are at day 100. The question is where she’ll be at day 365.