A new internal poll from the campaign of Democratic congressional candidate Jason Blazakis finds Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield), whom Blazakis hopes to unseat this year, with a modest early advantage in the 7th congressional district.
According to the poll, which was conducted by the Democratic-affiliated pollster Public Policy Polling, Kean starts out with an eight-point lead over Blazakis, 41%-33%. The poll also tested Kean against Sue Altman, Blazakis’s main Democratic primary opponent; Kean has an equivalent 43%-35% lead in that matchup. (A third Democratic candidate, Summit Councilman Greg Vartan, goes unmentioned.)
Those numbers corroborate what both parties have long assumed: that the 7th district is likely to host a competitive contest this year, even if Kean has an edge right now. But there are warning signs for both parties; Kean posts only so-so favorable ratings after five straight years of campaigning for the 7th district, while President Joe Biden is substantially underwater in a district he carried in 2020.
Of course, there’s still more than nine months of campaigning left to do before general election voters decide anything, so a lot could still change. At this stage of the campaign, neither Blazakis nor Altman have much name recognition among 7th district voters – which makes sense, given that both are first-time candidates for public office who have yet to begin airing ads. Around 80% of poll respondents said they’re not sure what they think of either candidate.
When poll respondents are given positive messaging about Blazakis, a former counterterrorism official in the U.S. State Department, and Altman, until recently the head of the progressive group New Jersey Working Families, the general election gap with Kean narrows. Kean leads the informed matchup against Blazakis by a 38%-36% margin and against Altman by a slightly larger 42%-38% margin, a sign that both Democratic candidates have room to grow once more voters learn about them.
But when respondents are given negative messaging against Altman relating to the left-wing views of the Working Families Party, Kean’s advantage in that matchup grows to 17 points, 49%-32%. (The poll did not test any negative messaging for Blazakis, so it’s unknown how he’d do in a similar matchup.)
That last data point is set to be a major piece of Blazakis’s campaign against Altman, who is currently the Democratic primary’s fundraising leader. When the process begins next month to determine who gets the county organizational line in the 7th district’s six counties, Blazakis will likely argue that his moderate politics and national security background make him a safer general election bet than the more progressive Altman.
Kean, meanwhile, doesn’t have especially high ratings himself. The freshman congressman, who unseated Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-Ringoes) by three percentage points in 2022, has a 26%-31% favorability rating and a 23%-29% approval rating, with a large number of respondents offering no opinion on their congressman.
But that’s still substantially better than Biden, whose job approvals in the district are well underwater at 38%-56%. The 7th district voted for Biden by four percentage points in 2020, but the poll finds that Biden is now trailing former President Donald Trump 48%-43% in the district.
In a generic ballot matchup between unnamed Republican and Democratic congressional candidates, the Republican candidate has a 49%-41% lead.
The Public Policy Polling poll was conducted on behalf of the Jason Blazakis campaign from January 16-17 with a sample size of 608 likely voters and a margin of error of +/- 4%.