A new poll shows the Democratic candidate for New Jersey Governor has a seemingly insurmountable lead over his Republican opponent, who just happens to be Chris Christie’s Lieutenant Governor:
The latest poll in the race to succeed Chris Christie as New Jersey’s governor shows Democratic nominee Phil Murphy with a commanding 27-point lead over Republican nominee Kim Guadagno — though a majority of voters continue to say they don’t know much about either candidate.
The Monmouth University Poll, released Wednesday, found 53 percent of Garden State voters would choose Murphy, a former U.S. ambassador to Germany, while 26 percent would pick Guadagno, the state’s lieutenant governor.
Six percent would select an independent candidate and 14 percent are undecided, according to the survey, which comes with less than six months to go before Election Day on Nov. 7.
The poll also shows that reducing New Jersey’s property taxes — the highest in the U.S. — is by far the top priority for the state’s voters this election year, in which all 120 seats in the state Legislature are also on the ballot.
The poll mirrors a Quinnipiac University poll that showed Murphy with a 29 point lead over Guadango that was released shortly after the two candidates were chosen in New Jersey’s June primaries. It also comes out at the same time that a new poll shows Governor Chris Christie continues to sink in public opinion polls, in no small part due to his actions during a budget dispute over the 4th of July weekend:
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) already dismal job approval ratings have sunk to a new all-time low after photos of him on a beach he closed to the public amid a state government shutdown went viral.
A Monmouth University poll released Monday found that just 15 percent of New Jersey adults think Christie is doing a good job as governor, matching numbers reported by Quinnipiac University last month. A whopping 80 percent disapprove of Christie’s performance, according to Monmouth.
Members of Christie’s own party gave the former 2016 GOP presidential candidate a 30 percent approval rating, while Democrats clocked in at only 7 percent.
Fifty-five percent also said they felt the state was worse off than when Christie became governor; only 15 percent say the state is better off.
The poll asked respondents about photos of Christie sitting on a beach he closed as part of a government shutdown. Eighty-six percent had seen the photos — captured by NJ.com — and two-thirds of those had negative reactions toward the pictures, with “disgust” being the word most commonly used.
Six percent used a form of profanity to describe their reaction to the photos.
Christie’s 15 percent approval rating in the Quinnipiac University poll last month was the lowest rating of any governor measured by the poll since it started tracking the metric more than 20 years ago.
Between this and the fact that President Trump lost the Garden State by more than 500,000 votes last November, the odds of Guadango winning this thing in November are pretty much zero.
