Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair) maintains a lead over former Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli (R-Somerville) in a new Rutgers-Eagleton poll of the New Jersey governor’s race, though her margin has shrunk since the last time Rutgers looked at the race.
According to the poll, which was conducted between July 31 and August 11 and included 1,650 likely general election voters, Sherrill holds a nine-point edge over Ciattarelli, 44% to 35%, with 17% undecided. When undecided voters are pushed, Sherrill’s lead expands slightly to 47%-37%.
That’s quite different from Rutgers-Eagleton’s poll from early July, which put Sherrill up by a 20-point margin, 51% to 31% – an enormous lead that raised eyebrows and drew blowback from Ciattarelli’s campaign, which pointed out apparent problems with the poll’s sample and dismissed it as a “steaming pile of shit.”
The earlier poll, however, was a survey of New Jersey registered voters, while today’s poll makes an attempt at modeling a likely general electorate. That may help to explain the discrepancy between the two polls, especially since neither candidate has spent much money or done anything notable over the summer that would otherwise be likely to cause such a substantial shift. (Polls are also liable to have some amount of noise in their results, even if the race itself hasn’t changed.)
Other pollsters have found results more in line with what Rutgers-Eagleton released today: Patrick Murray’s StimSight Research put Sherrill up 48%-42% in early August, Fairleigh Dickinson University gave Sherrill a 45%-37% lead in late July, and even a GOP super PAC affiliated with Ciattarelli’s campaign still had Sherrill leading 47%-42% in mid-July.
“As summer winds down and the campaigns enter the final months, the race for governor has tightened,” Ashley Koning, the director of the Eagleton Center at Rutgers, said in a release accompanying today’s poll. “Sherrill still has the edge, but the important thing to take away here is that the race is competitive and will continue to be in flux, in large part because there are still a notable number of undecideds.”
According to the poll, both nominees have done a good job uniting their parties after contentious primaries: 85% of Democrats say they’ll vote for Sherrill, 81% of Republicans say they’ll vote for Ciattarelli, and independents are split 33% Sherrill, 32% Ciattarelli, 29% undecided. Since New Jersey has more registered Democrats than Republicans, that translates to a Sherrill lead.
Sherrill also holds a 69%-4% lead among Black voters, a 56%-22% lead among Hispanic voters, and a 47%-18% lead among Asian voters – all gaps that Ciattarelli, who is making a conscious effort to build on President Donald Trump’s gains among minority voters, will hope to close. Ciattarelli holds a small lead among white voters, 44%-38%.
Sherrill’s persistent lead in both internal and independent polls has made most observers view her as at least a small favorite to win in November; she was in a similar position in the lead-up to the Democratic primary, in which she led every single publicly released poll and ended up convincingly beating her five opponents.
Ciattarelli, though, has argued that he’s well-positioned to pull off a win, and he has a recent example he can point to of overcoming the odds: the 2021 governor’s race. That year, pollsters (among them Rutgers-Eagleton) consistently gave Gov. Phil Murphy healthy leads, but Ciattarelli ended up coming three percentage points away from unseating the governor in a race that wasn’t officially called for days after Election Day.
Koning alluded to the uncertainty surrounding her own poll – and any poll – in today’s release, saying that no one knows what the electorate will look like and that plenty can happen between now and November 4 that could reshape the race.
“We are also at a turning point in New Jersey politics,” she said. “Likely voters are always an unknown population, but especially given today’s political climate, shifting turnout dynamics in the state, and the race’s history-making potential, we simply do not know who will definitively turn out come Election Day. The only thing for certain is that all eyes are on New Jersey this cycle.”
The Rutgers-Eagleton poll was conducted from July 31 to August 11 with a sample size of 1,650 likely general election voters and a margin of error of /- 3.7%.
This story was updated at 8:20 a.m. with a correction: while Rutgers-Eagleton’s early July poll had an overall sample of adults, its sample for the Sherrill-Ciattarelli head-to-head included only self-reported registered voters.
