Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.) continues to hold a commanding lead over her main rival, Jack Ciattarelli (R), in the race to be New Jersey’s next governor, according to a new poll.
The latest Rutgers/Eagleton poll found Sherrill with a 9-point lead over Ciattarelli with three months left until Election Day, but pollsters noted that the dynamics could shift as 17 percent of likely voters remain undecided.
“As summer winds down and the campaigns enter the final months, the race for governor has tightened,” Ashley Koning, director of the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, said in a release on the latest poll’s findings.
“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,” Koning said.
The center’s poll last month found Sherrill ahead by a much larger margin of 20 points, which Ciattarelli’s supporters dismissed as inaccurate.
“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,” Koning said of the latest findings. “The only thing for certain is that all eyes are on New Jersey this cycle.”
New Jersey and Virginia are the only states that will have gubernatorial elections in November, and both states currently have governors who cannot be reelected because of term limits.
Democratic New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy has been in office since 2018.
The Rutgers poll found that there is little willingness from partisans to shift their political alliances this cycle — 85 percent of surveyed Democrats said they would vote for Sherrill, and 81 percent of Republicans said they would vote for Ciattarelli — but how independents will vote remains uncertain.
“Independents are always a key voting bloc here in New Jersey,” Koning said. “Despite recent Republican registration gains, Ciattarelli still needs a substantial share of independents to win in November. Likewise, Sherrill must hold her edge with independents across key areas to cushion against any softness in base turnout.”
The Rutgers poll surveyed 1,650 likely New Jersey voters through the probability-based Rutgers-Eagleton/SSRS Garden State Panel from July 31-Aug. 11. The margin of error is 3.7 percentage points.
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