With little more than a month to go before New Jersey’s June 10 primary, a new Rutgers-Eagleton Institute for Politics poll shows that in the race for governor, about 42% of registered Republicans and Republican-leaning independent voters say they favor former Republican Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli.
Democrats are more divided among the six candidates in the crowded race for that party’s nomination. And a majority of voters remain largely unaware of the gubernatorial candidates overall.
“We still see very large numbers who either have no opinion when it comes to favorability of these candidates or don’t even know who they are. This isn’t necessarily out of the norm,” said Ashley Koning, director of the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling, in an interview with NJ Spotlight News.
“It’s really a tale of two primaries,” Koning said. “On the Republican side we see in the polling that Jack Ciattarelli, far and away, also the 2021 gubernatorial nominee, has support from Republican voters, and Bill Spadea being in a far-distant second. So given the margin of error, given the small sample size, this is actually a pretty substantial lead among who voters would choose among Republicans.”
