Recent public polling in the New Jersey governor’s race has shown Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill leading Republican Jack Ciattarelli by varying degrees. Like many campaigns in the last decade, President Donald Trump and voter perceptions of his performance have loomed over this race.
But Sherrill’s lead also appears to be tied to how voters in New Jersey view another politician: Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy.
Polls conducted in recent weeks have not tested Murphy’s job approval rating, but a Fox News survey conducted Oct. 10-14 found 47% of voters had a favorable view of the two-term governor, while 49% had an unfavorable view of him. Sherrill led Ciattarelli in that survey by 5 points, within the poll’s margin of error.
In the handful of public polls that did test Murphy’s job approval during the fall campaign, the three surveys that showed Murphy with an approval rating in the high 40s also saw Sherrill build bigger leads. In two surveys putting Murphy’s job approval at 35%, including one that was conducted for Ciattarelli’s campaign, the gubernatorial results showed a tied or near-tied race — the best results Ciattarelli has enjoyed in the whole campaign.
The shift depending on Murphy’s approval rating underscores how views of the current two-term administration could be a key factor in the race.
Ciattarelli has tied Sherrill to Murphy and cast himself as the candidate representing change in the race, placing blame for the state’s woes on Murphy and Democrats, who control the state Legislature.
“Politicians like Mikie Sherrill and Phil Murphy just don’t get it,” Ciattarelli says in one recent TV ad. “They’re making New Jersey unaffordable, especially for the middle class. We need a change.”
Sherrill, meanwhile, has also put some distance between herself and Murphy on the issue of the state’s rising electricity costs, while also casting herself as a candidate who will bring change to state government.
“Make no mistake, I’ll also fight Trenton to bring down costs for families,” Sherrill said in a recent debate.
Five recent publicly released surveys, all of them conducted in September, measured both Murphy’s standing and the governor’s race in New Jersey.
A Fox News survey and a poll from the education group Yes Every Kid both found Sherrill up 7 points, with support from 48% of respondents, while a Quinnipiac survey from mid-September found Sherrill up 8 points, at 49%. Sherrill’s lead in the Fox News survey was outside the poll’s 3-point margin of error, while her leads in the other two surveys were just inside those margins of error.
Murphy’s approval rating in those three polls: 47% or 48%.
The outlier so far among independent surveys has been one from Emerson College Polling/PIX11/The Hill, which showed the race tied, with both Sherrill and Ciattarelli at 43%, within the survey’s margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 points.
Beyond the top-line results, a key difference separating the Emerson poll from others was Murphy’s approval rating, which that poll measured at 35%, more than 10 points lower than the other surveys.
As polls show different pictures of Murphy’s approval rating, Trump’s approval rating has remained in the low 40s, with each of the September surveys finding Trump’s approval at 41%.
Sherrill has tried to capitalize on that in her advertising, linking Trump to Ciattarelli, who has the president’s endorsement. Democrats are betting that voters’ opposition to Trump will drive them to the polls in November and boost Sherrill in the race. Ciattarelli, meanwhile, has largely praised the president while also brushing off Democratic attacks by arguing that Trump does not affect local issues like property taxes.
Meanwhile, both candidates were asked in a recent debate to grade Murphy’s administration, and Sherrill gave the two-term governor a B.
“There’s things like paying for the pensions, the nine increases in our credit rating that I like,” Sherrill said.
“But overall I think there’s ways Trenton could do a lot better, being much more responsive to people. I’m going to have a culture shift in Trenton. I’m going to make sure we have more accountability in government, driving down costs for people,” Sherrill added, also calling for more action to address housing costs and rail infrastructure.
Ciattarelli gave Murphy an F, calling Murphy’s tenure “the worst governorship of our lifetime.”
“Take a look at what’s happened in New Jersey. We have an affordability crisis because of property taxes, electricity rate, housing and child care. We have a public education crisis because we watered down the public school curriculum. We have a public safety crisis because we don’t let our local police do their jobs. And we have an overdevelopment crisis in our suburban communities because of high-density housing. It’s been a failure across the board,” Ciattarelli said.
Wherever Murphy’s approval rating is, his standing appears to be significantly better than former GOP Gov. Chris Christie’s after his two terms in office.
A Fox News survey conducted in October 2017 found 21% of New Jersey voters viewed Christie favorably, while 77% viewed him unfavorably. The survey did not test Christie’s job approval.
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