Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump by 4 points in New Jersey, a state that hasn’t voted for a Republican presidential nominee since 1988.
Monmouth University’s poll has Clinton at 38 percent support when pitted head-to-head against Trump, who receives 34 percent, with 15 percent of those polled saying they were undecided. An additional 11 percent said they would vote for another candidate despite the pollster not giving them that option.
{mosads}Patrick Murray, the Monmouth University Polling Institute director, predicted that many of those undecided voters would head toward Clinton, the Democratic front-runner.
“Blue Jersey doesn’t appear quite so blue at this stage of the campaign, but we should keep in mind that neither major party candidate has fully locked in the support of their partisan bases,” said
“When and if that happens, the benefit should accrue more to Clinton than to Trump simply because Democrats outnumber Republicans in the state.”
When including third-party candidates by name, Clinton has a 6-point lead over Trump, 37 percent to 31 percent. Fourteen percent are undecided, and 15 percent said they would vote for either a third-party like Libertarian Gary Johnson or the Green Party’s Jill Stein, or another unnamed candidate.
That lead is in line with recent polling from the Garden State over the past two months.
Clinton’s lead stems from strong support among female and young voters, while Trump holds the advantage among male voters.
The poll also found that neither candidate would benefit much from making Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.) or Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) their running mate.
More than 40 percent said picking Christie would make them less likely to vote for Trump, and almost half said the choice wouldn’t change their minds either way.
As far as Booker, two-thirds said Clinton putting him on the ticket wouldn’t matter, with 18 percent viewing the idea as positive and 13 percent viewing it as a negative.
Monmouth’s poll included 703 registered voters in New Jersey, with a margin of error of 3.7 points.