With two months to go before New Jersey voters select a successor to lame-duck Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, two well-respected and nonpartisan surveys had some stunning results.
According to a poll from Fairleigh Dickinson University, Rep. Mikie Sherrill, D-N.J., leads the Republican nominee, former New Jersey State Rep. Jack Ciattarelli, by 45% to 37% statewide. The survey of 806 registered voters was conducted July 17-23 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.
With the Garden State regarded as reliably Democrat turf and with no nominee of the sitting president's party winning the governorship in the year of his inauguration since 1981, the race for the New Jersey State House is surprisingly close.
Results of a Rutgers-Eagleton poll showed strikingly similar results: Sherrill leading by 44% to 35% statewide. The survey of 1,650 likely voters was conducted July 31-Aug. 11 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.
This was an improvement for Ciattarelli, whom the same survey showed in July was trailing Sherrill by 51% to 31%. That survey of 621 adults was conducted June 13-16 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 5.4 percentage points.
When Fairleigh Dickinson respondents were asked about local issues such as energy, flooding, or the New Jersey transit system, the poll found that Ciattarelli's support among independents increased by 7 percentage points.
However, when asked about national issues such as President Donald Trump or immigration, the same survey found Ciattarelli's support among independents decreasing by 4 percentage points.
But one issue not covered in the Fairleigh Dickinson or Rutgers-Eagleton polls that may work to the GOP hopeful's advantage involves another candidate for another office: Zohran Mamdani, Democrat nominee for mayor of New York and self-styled "democratic socialist," known nationally for such positions as calling for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he arrives in the city, defunding the police, and establishing state-run grocery stores.
A brass-knuckle Ciattarelli TV spot shows an interview with Sherrill on July 25 in which she says of Mamdani, "I haven't made any endorsements in New York because I'm running in New Jersey." But that clip is quickly followed by another on July 25 in which Sherrill says, "If he's the Democratic candidate, which it sounds like he is, I assume I will. You know, if he's going to be working to deliver efficient government and that's something very interesting to me."
"New Jersey voters aren't stupid, Mikie," blares the closing line of the spot. "Own up."
Analyzing the Fairleigh Dickinson poll for Newsmax, political scientist Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, told us: "Jack Ciattarelli has a chance to win New Jersey's open governorship, but he needs to convince about 10% of Kamala Harris' voters to switch parties while retaining and energizing Trump's expanded 2024 voter pool. That's a very tough order."
Four years after he fell short of winning the governorship by 84,286 votes out of more than 2.6 million cast in an election that took two weeks to count, Ciattarelli now seems in a position to possibly meet that "tough order."
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.