According to the latest results from the FDU Poll, sponsored by the Commerce and Industry Association of New Jersey, Garden State voters support a controversial Turnpike expansion, and think that NJ Transit shouldn’t be tapping into the transportation trust fund to cover operating expenses. Unlike most issues in New Jersey, there is little in the way of partisan divides on these transportation issues, with broad agreement across party and regional lines.

“Transportation is one of the few non-partisan issues in New Jersey,” said Dan Cassino, Professor of Government and Politics at Fairleigh Dickinson University, and the Executive Director of the FDU Poll. “Doesn’t matter if you’re a Republican or a Democrat, everyone’s train gets delayed the same, and everyone waits in the same traffic.”

The first question in the series asked Jersey voters about the state’s use of the transportation trust fund to support NJ Transit’s operating costs, despite rules that are supposed to dedicate that funding to infrastructure and equipment improvements.

Since 1990, more than $7 billion dollars in money that was supposed to have been spent on infrastructure and improvements have been diverted to operating costs for NJ Transit, largely as a way to avoid fare hikes while giving the agency the money it needs to continue existing services. Direct state aid to NJ Transit was more than $500 million per year for most of the 1990s, but fell to an average of around $400 million per year in the 2000s and cratered to less than $100 million per year during the Christie Administration. During the pandemic, direct state aid went back up to historic levels but has since returned to baseline levels of a little more than $100 million per year.

A new corporate tax surcharge passed this year, which would apply to businesses with more than $10 million in profits and is expected to eventually bring in around $800 million per year for NJ Transit. This amount is just enough to cover the agency’s projected budget shortfall and could serve to reduce the amount that the agency takes from the transportation trust fund.

“In the most densely populated state in the nation, commuters and commerce have to move and our roads must be able to accommodate the flow of goods and commuters in a way that is sustainable and productive.  The expansion of the turnpike will allow us to meet that goal,” said Anthony Russo, President of the Commerce and Industry Association of New Jersey. “People understand that we need new infrastructure.”

When asked to choose between using money from the transportation trust fund for infrastructure or operating costs, most NJ voters (66 percent) say that the money should be used just for infrastructure and equipment. Just nine percent say that it should be used for operating expenses, and 18 percent volunteered that it should be used for a combination of the two.

There is no significant party divide on the issue, with 66 percent of Democrats and 69 percent of Republicans saying that the transportation trust fund money should be used just for infrastructure. Differences across regions of the state are similarly small.

“Voters don’t like budget gimmicks,” said Cassino. “Once people take note of the shenanigans that are going on with NJ Transit funding, they’re not happy about it.”

The second question about transportation controversies asked about the expansion of the section of the NJ Turnpike leading to the Holland Tunnel. The expansion – which is now expected to cost more than $10 billion – would increase the number of lanes running from Newark Airport, and past Jersey City before meeting up with the Holland Tunnel. Proponents of the project argue that it is needed to accommodate the increased number of trucks coming from the state’s ports, and that the bridges that would be expanded need to be replaced anyway. Opponents worry about environmental effects and note that the project would do nothing to improve traffic into the Holland Tunnel, which would have the same number of lanes going into New York.

“The Turnpike expansion is overwhelmingly popular which is no surprise given how bad traffic has become post COVID,” said Russo. “We need to update our infrastructure to reflect the massive increases in shipping that we’ve seen.”

Still, while the expansion has been politically contentious, 58 percent of New Jersey voters favor the project, with Democrats (63 percent) being slightly more likely to support it than Republicans (56 percent). As might be expected, voters in the northeastern portion of the state (65 percent) are more likely to support it than those in most other parts of the state, though support in South Jersey is surprisingly high (64 percent).

“The long-term solution for traffic is always going to be a mixture of mass transit and targeted road improvements,” said Cassino. “But we have to do something, and since expansions of mass transit aren’t coming, expanding roads is just about the only thing we can do.”

Methodology

The survey was conducted between October 20 and October 27, 2024, using a voter list of adult New Jersey residents carried out by Braun Research of Princeton, New Jersey. Voter lists were obtained from Aristotle International of Washington, DC. Respondents were randomly chosen from the list, and contacted via either live caller telephone interviews, or text-to-web surveys sent to cellular phones, resulting in an overall sample of 806 registered voters in New Jersey. 221 of the surveys were carried out via live caller telephone interviews on landlines, 302 on live caller interviews to cell phones, and the remainder (286) were done on a web platform via weblinks sent via SMS to cell phones. Surveys were conducted only in English. Respondents were considered likely voters if they (a) were registered to vote in the state, and (b) said that they planned to vote in the Senate race.

The data were weighted to be representative of the population of New Jersey voters, according to data from Pew Research. The weights used, like all weights, balance the demographic characteristics of the sample to match known population parameters. The weighted results used here are balanced to match parameters for sex, age, education and race/ethnicity.

SPSSINC RAKE, an SPSS extension module that simultaneously balances the distributions of all variables using the GENLOG procedure, was used to produce final weights. Weights were trimmed to prevent individual interviews from having too much influence on the final results. The use of these weights in statistical analysis helps to ensure that the demographic characteristics of the sample approximate the demographic characteristics of the target population. The size of these weights is used to construct the measure of design effects, which indicate the extent to which the reported results are being driven by the weights applied to the data, rather than found in the data itself. Simply put, these design effects tell us how many additional respondents would have been needed to get the weighted number of respondents across weighted categories: larger design effects indicate greater levels of under-representation in the data. In this case, calculated design effects are approximately 1.3.

All surveys are subject to sampling error, which is the expected probable difference between interviewing everyone in a population versus a scientific sampling drawn from that population. Sampling error should be adjusted to recognize the effect of weighting the data to better match the population. In this poll, the simple sampling error for 806 registered New Jersey voters is +/-3.5 percentage points, at a 95 percent confidence interval. Including the design effects, the margin of error would be +/-4.1 percentage points, though the figure not including them is much more commonly reported.

This error calculation does not take into account other sources of variation inherent in public opinion studies, such as non-response, question wording, differences in translated forms, or context effects. While such errors are known to exist, they are often unquantifiable within a particular survey, and all efforts, such as randomization and extensive pre-testing of items, have been used to minimize them.

The FDU Poll is a member of the AAPOR Transparency Initiative and is devoted to ensuring that our results are presented in such a way that anyone can quickly and easily get all of the information that they may need to evaluate the validity of our surveys. We believe that transparency is the key to building trust in the work of high-quality public opinion research, and necessary to push our industry forward.

Weighted Telephone Sample Characteristics

806 Registered New Jersey Voters

Figures do not include individuals who declined to answer demographic items.

Man

49%                 N = 392

Woman

51%                 N = 410

Some Other Way

1%                  N = 5

18-30

17%                N = 135

31-44

25%                 N = 203

45-64

36%                 N = 289

65+

22%                 N = 180

White

69%                N = 557

Black

13%                N = 104

Hispanic/Latino/a

12%                N = 95

Asian

5%                  N = 36

Other/Multi-racial

1%                  N = 9

No college degree

61%                N = 495

College degree or more

39%                N = 324

Region Classifications

Northwest: Hunterdon, Morris, Somerset, Sussex, and Warren Counties
Northeast: Bergen and Passaic Counties
Urban Core: Essex, Hudson, Mercer, Middlesex, and Union Counties
South: Burlington, Camden, Cumberland, Gloucester, and Salem Counties
Coast: Atlantic, Cape May, Monmouth, and Ocean Counties

Question Wording and Order

First off, we’d like to ask you a few questions about the upcoming Senate Election

P1. [Shuffle order of top candidates] In November’s New Jersey Senate election, do you intend to vote for Andy Kim, the Democrat, Curtis Bashaw, the Republican, for someone else, or do you not plan on voting?

1. Andy Kim, the Democrat
2. Curtis Bashaw, the Republican
3. Someone else
4. Not going to vote
5. [Vol] Don’t know/ Refused

And how do you feel about the candidates?

P2. Would you say that you have a favorable view of Andy Kim, an unfavorable view of him, or do you not know enough about him to say?

1. Favorable
2. Unfavorable
3. Don’t Know
4. [Vol] Refused

P3. Would you say that you have a favorable view of Curtis Bashaw, an unfavorable view of him, or do you not know enough about him to say?

1. Favorable
2. Unfavorable
3. Don’t Know
4. [Vol] Refused

Now, we’d like to ask you a few questions about transportation in New Jersey.

T1. NJ Transit is funded in part by the state’s gas tax. NJ Transit needs funds to repair and replace equipment and infrastructure, which could help with the system’s frequent delays and cancellations. But NJ Transit is also short on money for operating expenses. While funds from the gas tax are supposed to be used only for infrastructure and equipment, in recent years, they’ve been used for operating expenses as well.

What do you think? If you had to choose, should money from the transportation trust fund be used just to improve NJ Transit infrastructure, or used just for operating costs?

1. Infrastructure
2. Operating costs
3. Don’t Know
4. Refused

[Shuffle Order of Arguments]

T2. The New Jersey Turnpike Authority has proposed a major project that would expand the section of the Turnpike leading to the Holland Tunnel, which would be paid for by existing tolls. Supporters of the project say that it would speed up traffic, and the bridges on the route need to be replaced anyway. Opponents say that it would bring more cars into the area, and could have a negative impact on the health of the people living in the area.

What do you think? Should the section of the turnpike leading to the Holland tunnel be expanded, or not?

1. Favor expanding the turnpike
2. Oppose expanding the turnpike
3. Don’t Know
4. Refused

Further Questions Held for Future Release

Release Tables