FDU Poll Finds Sherrill Budget Dodges Unpopular Spending Cuts, Tax Hikes

Voters Want to Cut Rutgers Football Subsidies

Fairleigh Dickinson University, Madison, NJ, April 1, 2026 – Unveiled last month, Governor Mikie Sherrill’s first budget proposal includes a wide variety of cuts in state spending, as well as some revenue generating measures. While the ultimate fate of that proposal depends on negotiations between the Governor and the state legislature, the latest results from the FDU Poll show that while almost none of the proposed spending cuts are popular, the budget proposal dodges some of the even less popular cuts that could have been included. There was only one area in which voters supported spending cuts: state money going to subsidize the Rutgers football team.

“Balancing the budget means cutting spending and increasing revenue, and voters don’t tend to like either of those,” said Dan Cassino, a Professor of Government and Politics at Fairleigh Dickinson University, and the Executive Director of the FDU Poll. “But some cuts are more acceptable than others, and the Governor’s proposal seems to be dodging the least popular options.”

Overall, the most popular proposals polled – even though they’re still more opposed than supported – are among those included in the governor’s budget. These include charging a fee to businesses whose employees make use of state funded healthcare programs (47 percent support, 49 percent oppose) and reducing support for public colleges and universities (40 percent support, 59 percent oppose). The governor’s budget proposal also avoids some of the least popular options, like not making a full payment to the teacher’s pension plan (26 percent support, 71 percent oppose) and reducing NJ Transit funding (33 percent support, 64 percent oppose).

“Past governors balanced the budget on the back of cuts to the pension plans and NJ Transit,” said Cassino. “It looks like voters have seen the outcomes of those cuts, and are not in the mood for more of them.”

Cutting state support for local schools is also very unpopular, with only 26 percent support and 72 percent opposing, but there is room for disagreement about whether the proposed budget can be said to increase or decrease local school funding. Under the proposal, most school districts in the state will see an increase in funding, subject to a 6 percent cap. About 1/3^rd of districts would see a decrease in state funding, even as funding increases statewide. Still, even modest funding increases could lead to cuts in staff or programs, as health care costs for schools are increasing far faster than their funding.

Across almost all of the issues polled, views on where cuts should be made vary widely by underlying political views. Republicans in the state support cuts to public higher education (59 percent support, 38 percent oppose) and are relatively less opposed to cutting NJ Transit (42 percent support, 53 percent oppose). Democrats tend to not like any of the spending cuts but are more likely than other groups to support reducing property tax rebates for senior citizens in the state (41 percent support, 57 percent oppose). Only 19 percent of Democrats say that they support cutting money that goes to local schools, a figure that rises to 33 percent among Republicans, and 37 percent among self-described conservatives.

One novel element in the governor’s budget proposal would levy a fee on businesses whose employees make use of state funded health care, recovering fees to help cover that care and perhaps incentivizing these businesses to cover more of their employees. The proposal would charge businesses with 50 or more employees a fee based on how many employees are enrolled in the state system. Forty-seven percent of voters in the state say that they support this proposal, with 49 percent saying that they oppose it. Support is higher among Democrats (51 percent), liberals (53 percent) and progressives (59 percent), but relatively high even among Republicans (41 percent) and conservatives (40 percent).

“Increases in taxes or fees are never popular, but some are more palatable than others,” said Cassino. “To voters, charging businesses whose employees are getting health care from the state may feel more like restoring fairness than increasing taxes.”

While voters generally oppose cuts to state funding for higher education, there is one area in higher education that voters would like to see cuts. Of all the issues polled, the only that has net support among voters is cutting the flow of state money to the Rutgers football team. Overall, 67 percent of voters support cutting state funding to the team, including 64 percent of Democrats and 72 percent of Republicans. Just 31 percent of voters oppose such cuts.

Financial analysis carried out by NJ.com earlier this year showed that the football program received approximately $40 million from state coffers in the last few years of the Murphy administration, compared to just $100 thousand during the previous eight years under Governor Chris Christie. Such state funding is unusual in the Big 10. In recent years, only three schools in the conference – Illinois, Rutgers and Wisconsin – received similar money from their states. The state funds going to Rutgers football are in addition to hundreds of millions in student athletic fees, and other spending from the university. Membership in the Big 10 athletic league was supposed to allow the program to both spend more and support itself, but that has not happened.

Despite all this funding, the team’s performance has not been encouraging. Last year, Rutgers finished with a losing record: 2-5 in conference play, and 5-7 overall. Since joining the Big 10 in 2014, Rutgers has had three winning seasons and an overall record of 52 wins and 93 losses, going 22 and 84 in conference play.

“At a time when belts are tightening everywhere, it’s hard to justify tax dollars being spent to support a college football team,” said Cassino. “But voters might be happier about the subsidies if they were winning more games.”

Methodology

The FDU Poll is a proud 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.

The survey was conducted between March 20 and 28, 2025, using a voter list of registered voters in New Jersey carried out by Braun Research of Princeton, New Jersey. Respondents were contacted via either live caller telephone interviews, or text-to-web surveys sent to cellular phones, resulting in an overall sample of 805 registered voters in the state. Surveys were carried out via live caller telephone interviews to landlines (127) and cellphones (275) and the remainder (404) were done on a web platform via weblinks sent via SMS to cell phones. Surveys were conducted only in English.

The data were weighted to be representative of the population of registered voters in New Jersey. 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, region 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 1.2, largely driven by the weights used on the race/ethnicity variable.

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 805 registered voters is +/-3.4 percentage points, at a 95 percent confidence interval. Including the design effects, the margin of error would be +/-3.9 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.

Weighted Telephone Sample Characteristics

805 Registered Voters in New Jersey

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

Man                            

47%                 N = 376
Woman                            

52%                 N = 417
Some Other Way               

1%                  N = 5

18-30                         

15%                N = 119
31-44                          

22%                 N = 175
45-64                          

33%                 N = 266
65+                             

30%                 N = 243

White                       

65%                N = 523
Black                            

14%                N = 113
Hispanic/Latino/a                

12%                N = 97
Asian                            

4%                  N = 32
MENA                             

1%                  N = 10
Other/Multi-racial               

2%                  N = 18

No college degree               

57%                N = 459
College degree or more             

42%                N = 337

Democrat (including leaners)    

48%                N = 355
Independent (no lean)               

15%                N = 113
Republican (including leaners)  

37%                N = 271

Question Wording and Order

First off, we’d like to ask you a few questions about government here in New Jersey.

NJ1. Do you approve or disapprove of the way Mikie Sherrill is handling her job as governor?

1. Approve
2. Disapprove
3. Not Sure/Don’t Know [Vol]
4. Refused [Vol]

NJ2. Already, the governor has come into conflict with President Trump. When there is a conflict, what do you think the governor should do? Should she try and work with President Trump, or should she use lawsuits and other means to defy him?

1. Work with him
2. Defy him
3. It depends or similar [Vol]
4. Don’t Know
5. Refused

B1. In order to balance the budget, the state of New Jersey is going to have to either cut spending, increase taxes, or both. I’m going to list some proposals that could cut spending or increase revenue for the state. Which of the following proposals to help balance the budget would you support? You can say “yes” to as many as you like.

1. Not make a full payment to teacher’s pension plans
2. Reduce support for public colleges and universities
3. Reduce the property tax rebates received by seniors in the state
4. Reduce state support for local schools
5. Cut state funding for the Rutgers football team
6. Reduce funding for NJ Transit
7. Charge a fee to businesses who have employees that get healthcare from the state

1. Support/Yes
2. Oppose/No
3. Don’t Know
4. Refused

Further Questions Held for Later Release

Release Tables

Contact:                           

Dan Cassino 

Executive Director, FDU Poll    

973.896.7072/ dcassino@fdu.edu