The results on the latest FDU Poll on energy are easy to digest: A majority of voters in New Jersey favor anything that could bring down prices.
According to the poll, which was done in partnership with the International Union of Operating Engineers, voters favor an “all of the above” approach, with majorities supporting expansion of natural gas, renewable and nuclear power in the state, as well as a ban on new data centers.
Dan Cassino, a professor of government and politics at Fairleigh Dickinson University and the Executive Director of the FDU Poll, said the results speak volumes about the wants of New Jerseyans.
“Freezing electric bills helps, but it doesn’t solve the long-term problem or bring costs back down to where they used to be,” he said. “The state needs to expand capacity, and voters don’t seem to care too much how we do it, so long as it gets done.”
Respondents were asked about their support for four different proposals that could bring down energy prices: building various kinds of power plants (natural gas, nuclear and renewable) and banning the construction of new data centers until more power plants can be built.
All the proposals have the support of a majority of voters in New Jersey, but the extent of that support and the constituencies for each vary widely.
Eighteen percent said that they supported all four of the proposals, and another 40 percent supported three out of the four. Just ten percent supported zero or one of them.
During last year’s gubernatorial election, Gov. Mikie Sherrill endorsed such a strategy to increase New Jersey’s electricity generation and bring down prices to consumers.
Greg Lalevee, Business Manager for IUOE Local 825, praised the governor.
“Gov. Sherrill is leading in the right direction to support an ‘all of the above’ generation strategy that includes natural gas generating plants that could include a transition to hydrogen production once it is a more available alternative,” he said. “New Jersey voters understand we need to be quickly producing more energy in our state to make electricity more affordable.”
The construction of natural gas plants – which can come online faster than other types of power plants – gets the highest marks from voters.
Seventy-six percent of voters say that they favor building new natural gas plants, with relatively little variation across party lines: support is highest (83 percent) among Republicans but is 70 percent among
Democrats. Similarly, support is nearly unanimous among conservative (87 percent) and MAGA voters (90 percent) but is still positive among progressive (60 percent) and liberal (68 percent) voters.
“Even voters who might prefer green energy options want something done fast,” Cassino said. “Electricity bills are up right now, and voters are in favor of anything that can be done to bring them down in the short term.”
The construction of more renewable energy plants, using solar or wind, is nearly as popular among voters, with 67 percent supporting, but views of these plants are highly polarized.
While the construction of natural gas plants gets high marks across the board, it’s Democrats (90 percent), liberals (87 percent) and progressives (92 percent) who want more renewables. Republicans (38 percent support), conservatives (40 percent) and MAGA voters (28 percent) are opposed.
“Voters take their cues from party leaders,” Cassino said. “Republicans from President Trump on down have been vocally opposed to new renewable plants, and their supporters are following suit.”
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 20-28, 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.
Nuclear plants are the least popular of the three options, but even there, a majority (56 percent) favor their construction.
Republicans (65 percent) are more supportive than Democrats (48 percent). New Jersey currently gets about half of its energy from nuclear plants, but they are aging and will likely need to be overhauled or replaced in upcoming years.
On the demand side, about two-thirds of voters (65 percent) favor a ban on the construction of new data centers in New Jersey until more power plants can be built. While proposals like this have traditionally been bogged down by attempts to find a balance between environmental and economic concerns, support for a ban runs across party lines: 61 percent of Republicans support it, alongside 69 percent of Democrats.
“New Jersey voters are sending a clear message: the operators of new data centers need to show how their facilities will not raise rates,” Lalevee said. “Ideally, they might even be able to generate surplus power and feed it into the state grid. If they can do that, people will be a lot more receptive.”
The proliferation of data centers – especially in Virginia – has been cited as a driver of increased electricity bills throughout the East Coast. Currently, data centers use about 5 percent of the electricity in New Jersey.
“Rightly or wrongly, voters blame data centers for their increased electricity bills,” said Cassino. “The argument that doing so would hurt the state economy doesn’t help when people are worried about their own finances.”
Cassano noted: A previous release, outside of the sponsorship of these questions, showed that New Jersey voters were also strongly in favor of allowing balcony-sized solar panels, which can plug into a house’s electrical system without the need for an electrician.
Such panels are widely used in Europe, where they retail for about $400, and cut as much as 10 percent off a household’s energy bills. Seventy-eight percent of voters say that they are in favor of allowing such panels in New Jersey, with only 19 percent opposed.
