FDU Poll finds Kim Has Big Lead Over Murphy in NJ Senate Primary
Kim Has Big Lead Over Murphy in NJ Senate Primary
Murphy leads among Black and Hispanic Democrats; Menendez retains 9 percent support
Fairleigh Dickinson University, Madison, NJ, February 2, 2024 – While First Lady Tammy Murphy has racked up endorsements in the race for the Senate seat currently held by embattled Senator Bob Menendez, she trails in support among Democratic primary voters. According to the latest results from the FDU Poll, Congressman Andy Kim, who has represented New Jersey’s 3rd Congressional district since 2019, leads Murphy 32 to 20 among likely Democratic primary voters, with 31 percent saying that they are still undecided.
“Generally, institutional support is enough to win a primary in New Jersey,” said Dan Cassino, a professor of Government and Politics at FDU, and the director of the poll. “With Murphy down, this election is a test of whether county organizations still have the power to choose a candidate.”
Menendez, the incumbent, holds the support of nine percent of Democratic primary voters, and labor activist Patricia Campos-Medina has eight percent support. Kim’s 12-point lead among all Democratic primary voters is substantially larger among self-identified liberals (40 to 19, with 49 percent of Democratic primary voters identifying as “liberal”) and progressives (43 to 18, with 41 percent identifying). Murphy holds a lead among smaller groups of Democrats, like those who identify as conservatives (7 percent of Democratic Primary voters). Note that respondents were able to pick as many identifiers as they wanted.
Murphy also has a substantial advantage in name recognition, with 68 percent of Democratic primary voters saying that they know who she is, compared to 52 percent for Kim. Despite that, Kim has an advantage in favorability, with 24 percent saying that they “strongly approve” of him, compared with 13 percent for Murphy. Only 2 percent of Democratic primary voters say that they disapprove (strongly or somewhat) of Kim; Murphy’s disapproval is at 14 percent. The incumbent, Menendez, has 90 percent name recognition, but a majority of Democratic primary voters (53 percent) say that they “strongly” disapprove of him. Only 14 percent say that they recognize Campos-Medina.
Interestingly, Kim is viewed as being more liberal than either Murphy or Menendez. Voters who said that they recognized a candidate were asked to rate them on a 1 to 10, liberal to conservative, scale. Eleven percent put Kim in the most liberal spot (1 out of 10), while only 5 percent did the same for Murphy. Overall, Kim had a mean ranking of 3.9, compared to 4.5 for Murphy on the liberal to conservative scale. Menendez was ranked at 4.9.
“Neither Murphy nor Kim are hard left candidates, and there’s not a whole lot of room between their issue positions,” said Cassino. “But the perceived link between Murphy and the state’s Democratic power brokers is leading Democrats to see her as more conservative than Kim.”
Support in the race also breaks down along racial lines. Kim has a commanding lead among white Democratic primary voters (47 to 15), and a smaller lead among Asian-Americans (34 to 24). However, Murphy leads among Black voters (24 to 16) and has a large lead among Hispanic voters (26 to 10). Among Hispanic Democratic Primary voters, both Menendez (15 percent) and Campos-Medina (13 percent) poll as well or better than Kim.
“The real fight here is between white liberals, who are largely backing Kim, and more moderate Black and Hispanic voters, who are lining up behind Murphy,” said Cassino. “Kim has always run as a centrist candidate, but these liberal voters dislike the county organizations enough that they’ve adopted him as one of their own.”
__
Other aspects of the race, including match-ups with potential Republican challengers for Murphy and Kim, the effect of sexism on support for Murphy, the effect of stereotypes about Asian-American men on support for Kim, and the effect of the race on Governor Murphy’s approval, will be the subject of forthcoming releases.
__
The FDU Poll is in the top tier of polls nationwide. Poll aggregator Five Thirty-Eight has released its new rankings of polls ranking FDU 31st in the country, out of more than 500.
The rankings look at the error associated with a poll’s predictions and the degree to which the poll makes its methodology transparent. The FDU Poll scored high on both measures, with a pollscore accuracy ranking of -0.6 (lower figures represent less error and bias), and a transparency score of 8/10.
These scores are impressive when compared with other institutions. The overall ranking is better than that of many well-known polling groups like Gallup (35), Pew (38), SurveyMonkey (75) and Rasmussen (89).
The survey was conducted between January 21 and January 28, 2024 out by Braun Research of Princeton, New Jersey. Approximately half of the sample (238, or 46 percent) were from a list of adult New Jersey residents who have voted in previous New Jersey Democratic primary elections. Voter lists were obtained from Aristotle International of Washington, DC. The remainder of the sample (284, or 54 percent) were from a random digital dial sample of New Jersey residents who (a) identified as Democrats, or independents who lean towards the Democratic Party, and (b) stated that they would vote in the Democratic Senate primary.
Respondents were contacted via either live caller telephone interviews, or text-to-web surveys sent to cellular phones, resulting in an overall sample of 504 Democratic respondents. 54 of the surveys were carried out via live caller telephone interviews on landlines, 246 on live caller interviews to cell phones, and the remainder (220) were done on a web platform via weblinks sent via SMS to cell phones. Surveys were conducted only in English.
The data were weighted to be representative of the population of New Jersey Democrats, according to data from Pew Research. This composition, rather than one based solely on past Democratic primary voters, was used because of the largely unprecedented nature of the highly competitive primary expected in this cycle. The weights used, like all weights, balance the demographic characteristics of the sample to match known population parameters. The weighted results used here are balanced to match parameters for sex, age, education and race/ethnicity. Different beliefs about the likely composition of the electorate would lead to different weighting decisions, and, thus, to different outcomes in the results of the poll.
SPSSINC RAKE, an SPSS extension module that simultaneously balances the distributions of all variables using the GENLOG procedure, was used to produce final weights. Weights were trimmed to prevent individual interviews from having too much influence on the final results. The use of these weights in statistical analysis helps to ensure that the demographic characteristics of the sample approximate the demographic characteristics of the target population. The size of these weights is used to construct the measure of design effects, which indicate the extent to which the reported results are being driven by the weights applied to the data, rather than found in the data itself. Simply put, these design effects tell us how many additional respondents would have been needed to get the weighted number of respondents across weighted categories: larger design effects indicate greater levels of under-representation in the data. In this case, calculated design effects are approximately 1.5, driven mostly by race-based weighting that increased the representation of Black and Hispanic voters.
All surveys are subject to sampling error, which is the expected probable difference between interviewing everyone in a population versus a scientific sampling drawn from that population. Sampling error should be adjusted to recognize the effect of weighting the data to better match the population. In this poll, the simple sampling error for 504 Democratic primary voters is +/-4.5 percentage points, at a 95 percent confidence interval. Including the design effects, the margin of error would be +/-6.7 percentage points, though the figure not including them is much more commonly reported.
This error calculation does not take into account other sources of variation inherent in public opinion studies, such as non-response, question wording, differences in translated forms, or context effects. While such errors are known to exist, they are often unquantifiable within a particular survey, and all efforts, such as randomization and extensive pre-testing of items, have been used to minimize them.
The FDU Poll is a member of the AAPOR Transparency Initiative and is devoted to ensuring that our results are presented in such a way that anyone can quickly and easily get all of the information that they may need to evaluate the validity of our surveys. We believe that transparency is the key to building trust in the work of high-quality public opinion research, and necessary to push our industry forward.
504 Democratic Likely Primary Voters
Figures do not include individuals who declined to answer demographic items.
Man
46% N = 237
Woman
53% N = 276
Some Other Way
1% N = 3
18-30
19% N = 155
31-44
31% N = 250
45-64
31% N = 250
65+
19% N = 152
White
49% N = 257
Black
15% N = 86
Hispanic/Latino/a
21% N = 106
Asian
9% N = 40
Other/Multi-racial
3% N = 15
No college degree
34% N = 174
College degree or more
65% N = 341
First off, we’d like to ask you a few questions about the government here in New Jersey.
[Half of Respondents get this item here, half get it after E6] NJ1. Do you approve or disapprove of the way Phil Murphy is handling his job as governor?
- Approve
- Disapprove
- Not Sure/Don’t Know [Vol]
- Refused [Vol]
Later this year, there will be a race for the Senate seat currently held by Democratic Senator Bob Menendez. A number of candidates have declared their interest in those seats, or might do so.
For each, we’d like to know if you’ve heard of them or not, and, if you have heard of them, how you’d rate them on different 1 to 10 scales, where you can pick any number between 1 and 10.
E1. Have you heard of [candidate]?
[E2-E4 only if they’ve heard of candidate]
E2. On a 1-10 scale, where 1 is very much dislike, and 10 is very much like, how much do you like [the candidate], or do you not know?
E3. On a scale where 1 is very feminine, and 10 is very masculine, how masculine or feminine do you think [the candidate] is, or do you not know?
E4. On a scale where 1 is very liberal, and 10 is very conservative, how liberal or conservative do you think [the candidate] is?
[Shuffle order of candidates]
- Democratic Congressman Andy Kim
- Democratic Senator Bob Menendez
- Democratic First Lady Tammy Murphy
- Democratic Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill
D1. In politics today, do you consider yourself a Democrat, Republican, Independent, or something else?
- Democrat
- Republican
- Independent [ASK D1A]
- Something Else/Other
- DK/Ref [vol]
D1A. [Ask only if D1 is 3] Which way do you lean?
- Democrat
- Republican
- Independent
- Something Else/Other
- DK/Ref [vol]
D1B. In addition, which of the following terms would you use to describe your political views? You can choose as many as you like. [Shuffle Order]
- Liberal
- Moderate
- Conservative
- Socialist
- Progressive
- Libertarian
- America First
- Nationalist
E5. [Only Dems] Later this year, there will be a Democratic primary election for the US Senate seat currently held by Bob Menendez. Who do you think you’ll support in that primary election, if the race were between…
- Democratic Congressman Andy Kim
- Democratic Senator Bob Menendez
- Democratic First Lady Tammy Murphy
- Or would you not vote?
- Don’t Know/Ref [vol]
[Shuffle Order of General Election Match-Up Qs]
E5. [Shuffle Order of Candidates] Suppose that November’s election for Senate were between Andy Kim, the Democrat, and Christine Serrano Glassner, the Republican. Would you vote for the Democrat, Kim, the Republican, Glassner, or would you not vote?
- Democrat Kim
- Republican Glassner
- Would not vote
- Don’t Know/Refused [vol]
E6. [Shuffle Order of Candidates] Suppose that November’s election for Senate were between Tammy Murphy, the Democrat, and Christine Serrano Glassner, the Republican. Would you vote for the Democrat, Murphy, the Republican, Glassner, or would you not vote?
- Democrat Murphy
- Republican Glassner
- Would not vote
- Don’t Know/Refused [vol]
[Half of Respondents get this item here, half get it as the first item] NJ1. Do you approve or disapprove of the way Phil Murphy is handling his job as governor?
- Approve
- Disapprove
- Not Sure/Don’t Know [Vol]
- Refused [Vol]
Further Questions Held for Future Release
|
In June, there will be a Democratic primary election for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Bob Menendez. Who do you think you’ll support in that primary election, if the race were between…? |
||||
|
|
All Dems |
Liberal |
Moderate |
Progressive |
|
Congressman Andy Kim |
32% |
40% |
34% |
43% |
|
First Lady Tammy Murphy |
20% |
19% |
20% |
18% |
|
Senator Bob Menendez |
9% |
8% |
8% |
4% |
|
Labor Activist Patricia Campos-Medina |
8% |
5% |
9% |
8% |
|
[Vol] Don’t Know/Not Sure/Refused |
31% |
28% |
29% |
28% |
Respondents who said that they would not vote are excluded
|
In June there will be a Democratic primary election for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Bob Menendez. Who do you think you’ll support in that primary election, if the race were between…? |
|||||
|
|
All Dems |
White |
Black |
Asian |
Hispanic |
|
Congressman Andy Kim |
32% |
47% |
16% |
34% |
10% |
|
First Lady Tammy Murphy |
20% |
15% |
24% |
24% |
26% |
|
Senator Bob Menendez |
9% |
6% |
14% |
15% |
|
|
Labor Activist Patricia Campos-Medina |
8% |
7% |
7% |
2% |
13% |
|
[Vol] Don’t Know/Not Sure/Refused |
31% |
25% |
39% |
39% |
37% |
Respondents who said that they would not vote are excluded
|
Have you heard of/ Percent approve |
|||||
|
|
Heard of |
Strongly Approve |
Somewhat Approve |
Somewhat Disapprove |
Strongly Disapprove |
|
Congressman Andy Kim |
52% |
24% |
14% |
0% |
2% |
|
First Lady Tammy Murphy |
68% |
13% |
16% |
7% |
7% |
|
Senator Bob Menendez |
90% |
9% |
13% |
15% |
53% |
|
Labor Activist Patricia Campos-Medina |
14% |
4% |
3% |
1% |
0% |
|
On a scale where 1 is very liberal, and 10 is very conservative, how liberal or conservative do you think [candidate] is? |
||
|
|
% Very Liberal |
Mean Score |
|
Congressman Andy Kim |
11% |
3.9 |
|
First Lady Tammy Murphy |
5% |
4.5 |
|
Senator Bob Menendez |
6% |
4.9 |
|
Labor Activist Patricia Campos-Medina |
2% |
3.3 |
|
Which of the following terms would you use to describe your political views? You can choose as many as you like. |
|||||
|
|
Dems |
18-29 |
30-44 |
45-64 |
65+ |
|
Liberal |
49% |
47% |
54% |
44% |
53% |
|
Progressive |
41% |
51% |
43% |
39% |
24% |
|
Moderate |
38% |
37% |
31% |
51% |
37% |
|
Socialist |
17% |
26% |
23% |
8% |
9% |
|
America First |
10% |
12% |
9% |
9% |
13% |
|
Conservative |
7% |
0% |
7% |
5% |
17% |
|
Libertarian |
4% |
9% |
1% |
6% |
1% |
|
Nationalist |
3% |
9% |
0% |
2% |
5% |
|
[Vol] None of the Above |
6% |
4% |
8% |
3% |
4% |