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Survey: NJ Residents Aren't All That Happy With Life In The Garden State

By David Madden

WEST LONG BRANCH, NJ (CBS) -- If you live in New Jersey and you're not all that thrilled about it lately, you are not alone. A new statewide survey shows increased dissatisfaction with life in the Garden State.

It's not bad enough to prompt a mass exodus, but the latest quality of life survey from the Monmouth University Polling Institute offers a bit of a warning.

"The rating of New Jersey as a place to live stands at 55 percent positive," poll director Patrick Murray tells KYW Newsradio, "which sounds good. But that's an all time low in 35 years of this question being asked in New Jersey."

The prior all time low came in 2011 at 57 percent. And two months ago, 63 percent of respondents found life in New Jersey to be good or excellent.

Murray suggests the new numbers could have been worse. The survey factors in perceptions of hometown life, and those number are much better, with 71 percent of people liking their locale.

"People are very happy with their neighbors. They're happy with their towns." he says. "They're just not happy with the way the state is being run."

That dissatisfaction comes down to two issues: the economy and state government. Murray says people are generally unsure about New Jersey's economic recovery. And with Governor Chris Christie out of the state so much pursuing his Presidential ambitions, they don't see anybody actually running New Jersey.

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