Democrat Sherrill Takes Eight-Point Lead Over Republican Ciattarelli in New Jersey Governor’s Race
A new poll from conservative Fox News shows the congresswoman’s advantage growing, with ‘likely voters’ at 50 percent.
The dead-heat battle between the two leading candidates in New Jersey’s gubernatorial election is cooling off, with new polling numbers showing a Democratic congresswoman, Mikie Sherrill, taking the lead in the Garden State, and the numbers are coming from the most unlikely of places.
A recent Fox News poll shows Ms. Sherrill leading a former Republican state assemblyman, Jack Ciattarelli, among likely voters in the state with a 50 percent to 42 percent advantage — an eight-point margin. Among all registered voters, her lead was by seven points at 48 percent to 41 percent. Both margins exceeded the poll’s sampling error.
The poll also found that 90 percent of Republicans support Mr. Ciattarelli while Democrats support Ms. Sherrill at a rate of 89 percent.
In a separate poll released by Quantus Insights, Ms. Sherrill shows a slightly smaller lead of 48.1 percent to 45.8 percent among likely voters, a 2.3-point margin that dropped 10 points since their last poll.
Last week, the two opponents appeared to be running neck-and-neck as they met for their first debate, being separated by just four of the 935 likely voters polled by Emerson College. Each was favored by 43 percent of those polled while nearly 11 percent said they were undecided.
Their debate, which occurred the night before the poll had been release, quickly devolved in a verbal slugfest between the two candidates.
At one point during the debate, Mr. Ciattarelli noted that his Virginia-raised opponent is not a New Jersey native and linked her to Governor Phil Murphy, another political transplant, who has championed offshore wind energy.
“Now if he was from New Jersey, and anybody who was from New Jersey would know, that the Jersey Shore is sacrosanct here in this state. Nobody wants wind farms off our Jersey Shore, male, female, young and old, Republican, liberal, conservative, for different reasons,” he said.
When the candidates were asked whether they would keep the state sales tax at 6.6 percent, Mr. Ciattarelli answered, “We are not raising the sales tax here in New Jersey.”
Ms. Sherrill said she was not prepared to “commit to anything right now, because I’m not just going to tell you what you want to hear.”
