Fairleigh Dickinson University (FDU)’s new poll of New Jersey’s U.S. Senate race finds Rep. Andy Kim (D-Moorestown) with a hefty 57% to 39% lead against Republican Curtis Bashaw, providing yet more evidence that Kim is overwhelmingly likely to be New Jersey’s next senator.
Kim, a three-term congressman from Burlington County, also has strikingly strong favorability ratings in the poll: 53% of registered voters view him favorably and just 16% view him unfavorably, while Bashaw, a hotel developer from Cape May, has a more mixed 31% to 21% rating. 31% don’t know enough to have an opinion on Kim, and 48% don’t have an opinion on Bashaw – which may be evidence of the relatively low visibility that the Senate campaign has had for some voters.
“New Jersey is an expensive state to campaign in, and this Senate race just hasn’t been that visible,” FDU poll director Dan Cassino said in a release accompanying the poll. “Voters are seeing more ads for House candidates on Long Island than they are about the Kim-Bashaw race, so it’s not surprising that they don’t know much about the candidates.”
Kim’s 18-point lead is in line with previous Senate elections in New Jersey; Democrats haven’t lost a Senate race in the state since 1972, and they’ve won all of them by double digits since 2006. In 2020, Senator Cory Booker beat Republican Rik Mehta 57%-41%, while in 2018, Senator Bob Menendez won re-election to the seat Kim and Bashaw are now running for by a 54%-43% margin – and that was only after Republican Bob Hugin dipped into his personal fortune to spend $36 million attacking Menendez as a crook.
Bashaw, too, has used around $2 million of his own money tying Kim to the now-disgraced Menendez and saying that the congressman would be a rubber stamp for Democrats in Washington. But Kim’s message of anti-corruption and civility in politics – which he also used to great effect in his Democratic primary fight against First Lady Tammy Murphy and the state’s Democratic bosses – seems to have made more of an impact statewide.
“Bashaw’s strategy was to try and make Kim look unacceptably liberal to New Jersey voters, and it just hasn’t happened,” Cassino said. “To win, Bashaw needs to get a lot of crossover votes from moderates and Democratic leaners, and we’re just not seeing it in the data.”
Other recent polling data from New Jersey has put Kim in a similarly strong position. A poll from GOP pollster Cygnal gave Kim a 19-point lead statewide, 51% to 32%, and the Monmouth University Polling Institute found Kim up by six points in the 7th congressional district, which is much more Republican than the state as a whole.
Both of those polls also found Kim doing substantially better than Vice President Kamala Harris, who is expected to carry New Jersey but who may do so less convincingly than Kim. Today’s FDU release did not include numbers in the presidential contest.
The Fairleigh Dickinson University poll was conducted from October 20-27 with a sample size of 806 registered New Jersey voters and a margin of error of +/- 3.5%.