The first – and probably only – independent poll for New Jersey’s hotly-contested congressional race in New Jersey’s 7th district will be released on Wednesday by the Monmouth University Polling Institute, but it won’t include a head-to-head matchup between Republican Rep. Tom Kean, Jr. (R-Westfield) and his Democratic challenger, Sue Altman.
The poll will include support levels for Kean and Altman, along with which candidates voters trust most on different issues.
It will also test support in the 7th district between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump for President, and Andy Kim and Curtis Bashaw for U.S. Senate.
Independent polls in New Jersey, once plentiful, have become nearly extinct. Fairleigh Dickinson University has emerged as the leading source of New Jersey polls.
Patrick Murray, the director of the Monmouth Poll, has become a major player in national politics and has been polling presidential contests in battleground states and key U.S. Senate races. The Rutgers-Eagleton poll, which once dominated New Jersey political polling, has mostly disappeared; it’s unclear whether they will poll at all this cycle. Quinnipiac University, which passed Rutgers-Eagleton in the 1990s and early 2000s, has withdrawn from New Jersey completely; for a while, Quinnipiac was testing approval ratings of governors on a monthly basis.