WASHINGTON -- More than 6 in 10 New Jersey residents disapprove of President Donald Trump's job performance during his first year in office, according to a poll released shortly before his first State of the Union address.

A former owner of three Atlantic City casinos who spent his summer at his Bedminister golf club, Trump received a 61 percent disapproval rating from Garden State residents, with just 34 percent approving, in the Gallup poll.

Residents of only eight other states thought less of Trump than those living in New Jersey, according to the poll.

The biggest anti-Trump poll rating was in Vermont, where 69 percent disapproved of the president, and in Massachusetts, where 68 percent did.

"What eight states gave him lower approval ratings than us? That is what surprises me most," said Matthew Hale, a political science professor at Seton Hall University. "President Trump appeals to primary to white working class men who feel left behind, ignored and in jeopardy. We don't have a huge population in that demographic in New Jersey."

The Gallup poll said Trump's positives outweighed his negatives in only 12 states, primarily in the south and west. Trump gets the most love from West Virginia, where 61 percent approved of the president's performance in office.

Despite his Garden State ties, Trump embraced health care legislation that would penalize New Jersey and other states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.

He also signed a bill that gutted the federal deduction for state and local income, property and sales taxes. That tax break is disproportionately used by residents of New Jersey and other high-tax states that send billions of dollars more to Washington than they receive in services.

"That cuts deep in a state where taxes are routinely the number one concern of voters," Hale said.

Of the nine states that most disapproved of Trump, six were among the 10 states with the greatest percentage of taxpayers deducting their state and local taxes, and six were among the 13 states that subsidize the other 37.

U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., also cited the president's rhetoric on immigration.

"The average New Jerseyan knows that their neighbor is probably someone whose descendants, if not they themselves, were from someplace else in the world and they have enriched our state," Menendez said. "They hear a president who speaks ill of some of the very people who happens to be their neighbors."

Trump had the lowest first-year approval rating of any elected president going back to John F. Kennedy, and was the only chief executive with less than 50 percent support, according to Gallup.

The poll of 171,469 U.S. adults was conducted Jan. 20-Dec. 30 and had a margin of error of 1 percentage point. For individual states, the margins of error ranged from 4 to 8 percentage points.

Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JDSalant or on Facebook. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.