A new poll conducted by an education reform group supporting Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair) finds their preferred candidate with a solid lead in the race for governor of New Jersey.
According to the poll from Education Reform Now Advocacy – an affiliate of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), a pro-Democratic group that supports charter schools and other public education reforms – Sherrill leads Republican opponent Jack Ciattarelli by nine points, 49% to 40%, among likely voters.
The same group previously commissioned a poll in June, shortly before Sherrill and Ciattarelli won competitive primaries for their respective nominations, that put Sherrill up by a slightly larger 51%-38% margin. That earlier poll, though, was conducted by SurveyUSA, while today’s poll was conducted by Concord Public Opinion Partners.
“From her years as a prosecutor to her service in Congress, Mikie Sherrill has consistently delivered for New Jersey families with courage and conviction,” said DFER CEO Jorge Elorza, the former mayor of Providence, Rhode Island. “With Election Day just weeks away, voters across the Garden State are making it clear they trust her steady, pragmatic leadership to move New Jersey forward.”
As always with internal polls, the fact that the numbers are coming from a pro-Sherrill group should be factored into any analysis of what they mean. Recent nonpartisan polls have similarly found Sherrill in the lead, though usually by smaller margins, while GOP-aligned pollsters aligned with Ciattarelli’s campaign have shown a race that’s tied or close to tied.
Elorza’s group first began looking at the race during the primary, releasing a poll in early June that showed Sherrill and Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-Tenafly) – DFER’s two preferred candidates in a six-way Democratic primary field – with higher favorability ratings than their opponents.
Today’s new poll finds Sherrill above-water among general election voters, but only just: 45% of respondents said they have a favorable opinion of her, versus 42% unfavorable. That’s still better than Ciattarelli, who has a 41%-49% favorability ratio, and President Donald Trump, who stands at 44%-52%. (The poll did not seem to include a favorability question on Gov. Phil Murphy.)
True to the group’s mission, the poll also asked a series of questions about education reforms that DFER supports. According to the poll, 82% of voters support strengthening “early identification and intervention strategies to support struggling readers”; 63% support giving “more flexibility to families” in school choice by increasing charter school seats and allowing students to access schools outside their home district; and 57% support using new strategies, including artificial intelligence and “microschools,” to improve literacy rates.
Sherrill’s platform includes some education reforms like consolidating school districts, improving third-grade literacy rates, and implementing more high-impact tutoring, and Elorza said his group is behind her: “There’s a clear appetite for leadership that delivers tangible results, and a Sherrill administration would have both the mandate and the plan to deliver it,” he said.
Notably, though, Sherrill has been less forthcoming with her stance on another key issue for DFER: charter school expansion. Sherrill has broadly said that she supports high-performing charter schools, but nowhere in her education platform are charter schools mentioned, and Chalkbeat Newark reported earlier this week that Sherrill “has not specifically stated her position on expanding charter schools”; Ciattarelli, meanwhile, has specifically said he supports charter school expansion as well as a voucher program for private schools and home-schooling.
The Concord Public Opinion Partners poll was conducted on behalf of Education Reform Now Advocacy from October 16-18 with a sample size of 605 likely general election voters and a margin of error of +/- 3.9%.
