Republican Jack Ciattarelli faces an uphill battle in his quest to become governor of New Jersey, with a new poll showing him trailing Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill by 20 percentage points.
The Rutgers-Eagleton/SSRS survey shows Sherrill (D-NJ) getting 51% support among registered voters compared to 31% for Ciattarelli. Another 13% said they were unsure about whom they would vote for and 5% said they would support neither candidate.
Ciattarelli, 63, stunned most political observers four years ago when he came within 2.8 percentage points of unseating incumbent Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy.
President Trump similarly overperformed in New Jersey last November, losing the Garden State by only 5.9 percentage points — improving on his 2020 margin of defeat by 10 percentage points.
Republicans are hopeful that Zohran Mamdani’s shocking victory in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary could boost their prospects across the Hudson.
“As the next governor of NJ, I will be proactive in protecting our state from the lawlessness and chaos that will ensue if [Mamdani] becomes NYC’s next mayor,” Ciattarelli vowed last week.
“While NJ Democrats roll over to their extreme far-left base, I will take action to protect New Jersey.”
Sherrill, 53, has focused her pitch on opposing the Trump administration, and the Rutgers-Eagleton survey indicated it is having an effect.
The survey found more than half of respondents (52%) called the president a “major factor” in their vote for governor, while 18% called Trump a “minor” one.
“Trump’s influence appears to be more of a benefit to Sherrill right now, given key groups more likely to support her are also more likely to claim the president is a factor in their vote choice, while those more supportive of Ciattarelli do not,” observed Ashley Koning, director of Rutgers’ Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling.
“While Trump’s endorsement may have helped in the primaries, these numbers are an early sign that the endorsement may play differently when it comes to the general.”
Sherrill, a former naval aviator and federal prosecutor, was elected to Congress as part of a Democratic wave in 2018, succeeding longtime Republican lawmaker Rodney Frelinghuysen.
The poll found Sherrill outperforming Ciattarelli on all key voting issues, including taxes (39% to 34%), affordability (45% to 29%), the economy (42% to 33%) and budgeting (42% to 32%).
“Early polling on the governor’s race should serve as a baseline or a barometer of how voters are feeling in the moment — not as some crystal ball predicting the future four months from now,” Koning cautioned.
“A lot can happen between now and November, and we know this gap will very likely narrow in the next several months. We only need to look back to 2021 to see how much a race can change throughout a cycle.”
New Jersey and Virginia hold off-year elections, which are carefully watched as potential bellwethers for what’s to come in the midterms.
The Rutgers survey sampled 579 registered voters June 13-16 with a margin of error of plus or minus 5.2 percentage points.
