In the gubernatorial race in New Jersey, liberals are beginning to sweat bullets as GOP candidate Jack Ciattarelli has managed to close the gap by a great deal, putting him within striking distance of Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill. Don’t you love a good nail biter?
Both Ciattarelli and Sherrill stood out from the pack of other potential candidates in their respective parties during the primary election a week ago, which now has them squaring off for the top seat in Jersey this November. The fact this is happening in a die-hard blue state is more evidence that the country is fed up with progressive policies and the schmucks who push them. It’s time for real change.
A report from Newsweek said that Sherrill will have to answer questions concerning whether she can appeal to voters who have shifted to the right during the previous year’s presidential election. This includes young voters and Latinos. On the other side, Ciattarelli will try to employ a strategy that will build upon the momentum and progress of the Trump administration, despite the president having lost New Jersey by six points last November.
An internal poll from the Ciattarelli campaign, conducted by National Research and reported by The New Jersey Globe, showed Sherrill with a narrow lead. Forty-five percent of respondents said they planned to back Sherrill to 42 percent for Ciattarelli, according to the poll of 600 likely voters on June 11-12. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
A SurveyUSA poll, conducted on behalf of a left-leaning group Education Reform Now Advocacy, showed Sherrill with a larger lead. In that survey, 51 percent of respondents said they planned to vote for Sherrill compared to 38 percent for Ciattarelli. It polled 785 New Jersey adults on May 28-30 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 6.1 percentage points.
The SurveyUSA poll also found that Ciattarelli and Sherrill had similar favorability ratings among New Jersey voters, and that a slightly higher percentage of the state’s voters are familiar with Ciattarelli, who was the GOP gubernatorial nominee in 2021.
The poll also revealed Ciattarelli was viewed favorably by nearly 40 percent of voters, while Sherrill fell behind him at 41 percent. A total of 25 percent were unfamiliar with the GOP candidate, while 30 percent had no idea who Sherrill was.
“Make no mistake that this is a ‘CHANGE’ election and Ciattarelli is the CHANGE candidate. A majority of New Jersey voters (54 percent) believe that the state is heading in the wrong direction, while only 33 percent believe things in New Jersey are going in the right direction. Notably, Ciattarelli leads Sherrill by a whopping 72 percent to 14 percent margin among those wrong-track voters, and an even stronger 87 percent to 6 percent among voters who want a governor who will ‘shake up Trenton,” the Ciattarelli campaign said in a statement provided to Newsweek.
Dan Cassino, the professor of government and politics at Fairleigh Dickinson University, spoke with the publication earlier in the month, stating that while Sherrill is well known in her own district, she will have to apply a healthy amount of elbow grease into improving her name recognition during the campaign.
“Ciattarelli and Sherrill will spend the coming months making their cases to New Jersey voters about why they are the strongest candidates to lead the state. The Cook Political Report classifies the race as leaning Democrat—meaning it is ‘considered competitive’ but Democrats have ‘an advantage,” the report concluded.
"*" indicates required fields
