Former New Jersey state assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli, the GOP nominee for governor, has slashed Democratic New Jersey Rep. Mikie Sherrill’s lead in half in the state’s 2025 gubernatorial contest, according to recent polling.
Ciattarelli, who is running for governor a second time after narrowly losing to incumbent Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy in 2021, trails Sherrill 35% to 44% with 17% of voters undecided, according to a Rutgers-Eagleton survey released Thursday. The nine-point polling deficit is a significant improvement for Ciattarelli’s campaign, as the Republican nominee trailed his Democratic opponent by 20 percentage points — 51% to 31% — when Rutgers conducted a similar survey in early July.
Despite Sherrill’s polling advantage in the closely-watched gubernatorial contest, the pollster cautioned the race is in flux 75 days from election day.
“As summer winds down and the campaigns enter the final months, the race for governor has tightened,” Ashley Koning, the director of the Eagleton Center at Rutgers, said in a release accompanying the poll. “Sherrill still has the edge, but the important thing to take away here is that the race is competitive and will continue to be in flux, in large part because there are still a notable number of undecideds.”
Ciattarelli, who received President Donald Trump’s endorsement in May, is hoping to cement the president’s gains with minority voters and Americans making less than $50,000 per year. Harris won New Jersey by just six percentage points last November after the Garden State took a sharp right turn toward Trump.
Ciattarelli leads Sherrill 45% to 34% among voters who have some college or less while the New Jersey Democrat has a commanding lead with voters who have at least a college degree and earn more than $150,000 annually.
Sherrill, who is serving in her fourth term in the House of Representatives, has voted against nearly all Trump-backed legislation under consideration in the lower chamber this year. She won the Democratic nomination over a crowded field with just 34% of the vote.
Other recent polling has also shown Sherrill leading Ciattarelli by single digits. A Fairleigh Dickinson University survey published July 29 found Sherill led the New Jersey Republican 47% to 42%.
Several surveys missed Ciattarelli’s gains against Murphy in the run-up to the 2021 contest. One poll released less than a week before election day, showed the Democratic candidate with an 11-point lead despite Ciattarelli losing the race by only three percentage points.
Ciattarelli is not the only 2025 GOP gubernatorial candidate to have made double digit gains in recent polling. Winsome Earle-Sears, the Republican nominee for governor in Virginia, gained 10 points across a pair of Roanoke College polls from May to August. Virginia and New Jersey are the only states to hold gubernatorial elections in 2025.
The Rutgers-Eagleton survey of 1,650 likely general election voters was conducted from July 31 to Aug. 11 and has a margin of error rate of plus or minus 3.7%.
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