Rep. Andy Kim (D-Moorestown) commands significantly better favorability ratings among New Jersey Democrats than First Lady Tammy Murphy, his chief rival in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, according to a poll released today by the Monmouth University Polling Institure.
Among the self-identified Democratic voters polled by Monmouth, 48% said they had a favorable opinion of Kim, versus just 2% who had an unfavorable view. Opinions on Murphy were considerably more divided, with 24% of Democratic respondents having a favorable view of the first lady and 13% having an unfavorable view.
Kim is broadly popular across a wide range of Democratic demographics: 42%-2% with Democratic women, 57%-1% with Democratic men, and 37%-2% with Democrats in North Jersey, a part of the state he has never represented in Congress. Murphy’s ratings among those same groups are 26%-9%, 21%-20%, and 22%-12%, respectively. (Note that these numbers come from small subsamples of the poll’s overall sample of 757 registered voters, and thus should be approached with caution.)
The Monmouth poll did not test an actual primary contest between the two candidates, but its results line up with prior polls that did include a head-to-head matchup. The one independent poll of the primary election, from Fairleigh Dickinson University, put Kim ahead of Murphy 32%-20% and found him to be generally more well-liked by Democratic voters; Kim has released several of his own internal polls showing him with a wide lead as well.
Today’s Monmouth poll also finds Kim to be more popular than Murphy with the broader New Jersey electorate, thanks in no small part to some early Republican animosity towards Murphy, the wife of Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy.
Among all registered voters regardless of party, Kim has a favorable/unfavorable ratio of 28%-10%, with 26% of respondents having no opinion on the congressman and 36% saying they’d never heard of him. Murphy, by contrast, is at 14%-26%, with 40% having no opinion and 21% saying they haven’t heard of her.
Kim has a 9%-19% favorability rating among Republicans – a surprisingly high score for a Democratic congressman – while Murphy is at 2%-42%. Among independents, Kim is at 24%-11% and Murphy is at 11%-29%.
Two other Democratic candidates, activists Patricia Campos-Medina and Larry Hamm, are still mostly unknown; 75% of poll respondents hadn’t heard of Campos-Medina, while 87% hadn’t heard of Hamm, both of whom have struggled to break through in the race for indicted Senator Bob Menendez’s seat.
The same goes for the four Republican Senate candidates Monmouth tested. Mendham Borough Mayor Christine Serrano Glassner, developer Curtis Bashaw, former News12 reporter Alex Zdan, and former Tabernacle Committeeman Justin Murphy were all unknown to at least 80% of poll respondents, and at least 75% of Republicans. (Several other candidates, including businessman Fred Schneiderman, were not included in the poll.)
That’s not exactly surprising, since none of the GOP contenders have attracted sizable media attention or spent much money to make their case to voters (though Zdan did spend several years on New Jerseyans’ TVs as a reporter). Kim and Murphy, too, have focused most of their efforts lately on winning county conventions, insider-dominated processes that don’t mean much yet to rank-and-file voters.
“The contenders are currently focused on appealing to a small group of party leaders and committee members as they try to shore up county lines,” Monmouth University Polling Institute director Patrick Murray said in a release accompanying the poll. “So, it’s not surprising that the vast majority of actual voters know almost nothing about the field. It will be interesting to see what happens to these opinion gaps after the official filing deadline later this month.”
The poll additionally asked voters whether they’d consider voting for Kim or Murphy in a general election if they were the Democratic nominee, with Kim once again doing better – though the phrasing of the question limits the conclusions that can be drawn.
24% of respondents said they’d “definitely” vote for Kim, and 36% would “probably” vote for him in a general election; 33% said they definitely would not vote for him. 18% of respondents would definitely vote for Murphy and 33% would probably vote for her, while 42% definitely wouldn’t vote for her.
The results imply that Kim could be a stronger general election candidate than Murphy, something which Kim himself emphasized in a statement on the poll.
“Holding the Senate majority is vital. We cannot take any chances here in NJ,” Kim said. “Today’s Monmouth Poll shows that the campaign we’re building is the strongest in the state and will help other Democrats up and down the ballot so we don’t just keep the Senate, but retake the House and win races across New Jersey.”
The Monmouth University poll was conducted from February 29-March 4 with a sample size of 757 registered voters and a margin of error of +/- 4.3%.
This story was updated at 2:32 p.m. with comment from Kim.