A tax credit for owning a pet may sound like a wild idea, but New Jersey voters are more likely to support the idea than oppose it. The latest results from the FDU Poll show voters support the proposed law by a narrow margin while widely opposing a move to allow movie theaters to sell alcohol.

“Some people do think of their pets as being like children,” said Dan Cassino, a Professor of Government and Politics at Fairleigh Dickinson University, and the Executive Director of the FDU Poll. “So the logic is that if children get a tax credit, pets should as well.”

The pet tax credit is proposed in Assembly Bill 4995, sponsored by Assemblyman Alex Sauickie (R, 12^th District, Jackson). Under the bill, pet owners would get a $300 tax credit – meaning that they could take $300 off their state tax bill, as opposed to a deduction, which simply reduces the amount of table income – and up to $600 more for pet veterinary care.

Overall, 45 percent of voters say that they support such a measure, with 41 percent saying that they oppose it. Support is slightly higher among Democrats, and among young voters.

“There are reasonable questions to be asked about how regressive such a tax break would be,” said Cassino. “But people have pets, and people like money, so theories of taxation probably aren’t coming into how they’re thinking about this.”

The survey also asked about Assembly Bill 4666, which would allow movie theaters to sell alcohol. This bill, already passed by the Assembly last month and pending in the State Senate (as S4357), would allow theaters to acquire liquor licenses for between $150,000 and $210,000 (depending on whether they were linked with local breweries), regardless of the availability of liquor licenses in the municipality where the theaters are located. Some movie theaters already have liquor licenses, acquired through normal means, and special provisions already apply to non-profit movie theaters. Opponents of the bill note that many theaters have already paid more for those licenses than the amount provided in the bill, and the additional licenses could devalue licenses already held by restaurants. Theater owners say that selling alcohol would help them stay in business, even as ticket sales remain depressed after the pandemic. Liquor license reform generally was a priority in the last years of the Murphy administration, but they were unable to pass any major changes to the liquor license regime in the state.

Only 38 percent of New Jersey voters say that they support changing the law to allow movie theaters to more easily acquire liquor licenses, with 55 percent saying that they’re opposed. Support for such a change is unrelated to partisanship, but peaks among middle-aged voters, and is lower among older voters.

These questions were asked as part of a survey experiment, the results of which will be released later. This means that the FDU Poll made use of different methodologies than in our normal polls, and the results are subject to a larger margin of error driven by the need for larger than usual weights on the data. Please see the methodology note for more information. 

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 June 23 and 30, 2026, using a voter list of registered voters in New Jersey carried out by Braun Research of Princeton, New Jersey. Respondents were contacted via text-to-web (TTW) surveys sent to cellular phones, resulting in an overall sample of 1,211 registered voters in the state. Surveys were conducted only in English.

The data for these questions was gathered as part of a survey experiment focusing on views of segregation in New Jersey. The items included in this release were included as a filler task, meaning that they were designed to be (a) non-partisan in nature and (b) take up approximately the same amount of time and cognitive effort as the questions used in other conditions of the experiment. In survey experiments, the focus is on establishing internal validity (causality), rather than external validity (valid representation of the population as a whole). As such, TTW sampling, rather than our normal methodology was used. This means that larger than usual weights had to be applied to the data, increasing the credibility margins attached to the figures. While the overall size of the weights applied was not dramatically larger than those used in our normal survey procedure, TTW sampling necessarily reaches a different sample than phone-based sampling, and some caution should be used when evaluating the population estimates given.

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 1.4, largely driven by the weights used on the race/ethnicity and age variables.

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 1,211 registered voters is +/-3.0 percentage points, at a 95 percent confidence interval. Including the design effects, the margin of error would be +/-4.2 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

1,211 Registered Voters in New Jersey

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

Man                                 49%                 N = 578
Woman                             50%                 N = 598
Some Other Way           1%                  N = 14

18-30                           14%                N = 172
31-44                           22%                 N = 264
45-64                           33%                 N = 393
65+                               30%                 N = 362

White                                            68%                N = 804
Black                                               11%                N = 131
Hispanic/Latino/a                                      13%                N = 154
Asian                                        4%                  N = 47
Other/Multi-racial                                     3%                  N = 39

No college degree                       57%                N = 678
College degree or more              43%                N = 516

Democrat (including leaners)     44%                N = 488
Independent (no lean)                 19%                N = 212
Republican (including leaners)   37%                N = 413

Question Wording and Order

NJ1. In New Jersey, as you know, you can’t pump your own gas, the gas station must pump it for you. Do you support or oppose this rule?

1. Support current rule
2. Oppose current rule
3. DK [VOL]
4. Refused [VOL]

NJ2. The state legislature has proposed that pet owners should get tax credits to help offset the cost of keeping a cat or a dog. Pet owners could get up to $300 for everyday expenses, and up to $600 for veterinary costs. Supporters say that pet ownership is expensive, and owners deserve a break. Opponents say that there are better ways for the state to spend money. What do you think? Should the state provide tax credits for pet owners, or not?

1. Provide tax credits for pet owners
2. Don’t provide tax credits for pet owners
3. DK [VOL]
4. Refused [VOL]

NJ3. A bill in the state legislature would allow movie theaters to sell alcohol. Movie theater owners say it will help them stay in business. Some people are opposed, saying that it would hurt local restaurants and bars that paid a lot of money for liquor licenses. What do you think?

1. Movie Theaters should be able to sell alcohol
2. Keep current restrictions in place
3. DK [VOL]
4. Refused [VOL]

Further Questions Held for Later Release

Release Tables