Sen. Menendez holds 14% job approval
A new Emerson College Polling/PIX11/The Hill survey in New Jersey finds Congressman Andy Kim leading the Democratic Primary for U.S. Senate with 51%, while 39% are undecided. Six percent support Patricia Campos Medina, and 5% support Lawrence Hamm. A majority of Republican Primary voters (84%) are undecided on which candidate they will vote for.
“Kim has coalesced a base of voters over 60 and those with college degrees,” Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, said. “64% of voters over 60 and 58% of voters with a college degree support Kim for the nomination.”
If current Senator Bob Menendez, who has held the seat since 2006, were to run as an independent candidate, 9% would support him, while 49% would support the Democratic nominee, and 42% the Republican nominee.
“Hispanic and Black voters in New Jersey are more supportive of Menendez as an independent candidate, 17% support the senator rather than a hypothetical Democratic or Republican candidate, compared to 6% of white voters,” Kimball noted. “Additionally, 24% of voters under 30 support Menendez on a three-way ballot.”
Menendez has a 14% job approval rating among New Jersey voters, while 62% disapprove of the job he is doing. Senator Cory Booker has an approval rating of 41%, and 34% disapproval.
- Menendez’s approval is at 22% among Democrats and 9% among Republicans and independent voters. The Senator’s approval is highest among voters under 30, at 30%, and lowest among voters over 60, at 7%.
President Joe Biden holds a 40% job approval rating and 47% disapproval.
In the 2024 presidential election, 46% support Joe Biden, 39% Donald Trump, and 15% are undecided.
Over a third (35%) of Trump supporters would vote for the former President because they care about an issue, while 30% would vote for Trump because they like him. Thirty-one percent of Biden supporters support him because they dislike Trump, while 25% support Biden because they like him.
When third-party candidates are added to the ballot, Biden’s support decreases 5 points to 41% and Trump drops 3 points to 36%. Robert Kennedy Jr. received 8% support, Cornel West 1%, and Jill Stein 1%, while 14% remain undecided.
A majority of voters (62%) think the current ballot design in New Jersey that allows candidates endorsed by leaders of local political parties to be listed in a prominent position in a single column or row, referred to as “the line,” is fair, while 38% think it is not fair.
The top issue for New Jersey voters is the economy (39%), followed by housing affordability (12%), threats to democracy (11%), immigration (10%), healthcare (7%), crime (7%), and education (5%).
Methodology
The Emerson College Polling/PIX11/The Hill New Jersey survey was conducted March 26-29, 2024. The sample of registered voters, n=1,000, has a credibility interval, similar to a poll’s margin of error (MOE), of +/- 3 percentage points. The Democratic primary consisted of 408 Democratic primary voters with a credibility interval of +/-4.8%. The Republican primary consisted of a sample of 310 Republican primary voters with a credibility interval of +/-5.5%. The data sets were weighted by gender, education, race, age, party affiliation, and region based on 2024 registration modeling. Turnout modeling is based on U.S. Census parameters, and voter registration data (NJ S.O.S.).
It is important to remember that subsets based on demographics, such as gender, age, education, and race/ethnicity, carry with them higher credibility intervals, as the sample size is reduced. Survey results should be understood within the poll’s range of scores, and with a confidence interval of 95% a poll will fall outside the range of scores 1 in 20 times.
Data was collected by contacting an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system of landlines, cell phones via MMS-to-web (both provided by Aristotle), and an online panel of voters provided by CINT.
This survey was conducted by Emerson College Polling and sponsored by Nexstar Media. All questions asked in this survey with exact wording, along with full results and cross tabulations can be found under “Full Results.”
