Compared to the dogfight in the Democratic gubernatorial nomination contest, the equally important race for the Republican nomination has one candidate – the 2021 nominee, former State Representative Jack Ciattarelli – well ahead of his opponents in nearly all measures. The latest FDU Poll of New Jersey voters contains a subsample of 430 Republicans, and among these voters, there are signs that Ciattarelli’s lead is tenuous, especially among the MAGA voters making up an increasing share of the Party.

Among the four leading Republican candidates for Governor, Ciattarelli has a commanding lead in both name recognition and favorability among self-identified Republicans. Seventy-eight percent of Republicans in the state say that they recognize the former assemblyman, and 39 percent say that they have a favorable view of him. The other candidates polled – talk show host Bill Spadea, former State Senator Ed “The Trucker” Durr and former assemblyman John Bramnick – all have similar levels of favorability, at around 20 percent of Republicans, with lower levels of name recognition. Among these, Spadea has the highest name recognition – 54 percent – but this doesn’t translate into higher favorability ratings for the former Republican congressional nominee.

“The fact that Ciatterelli has run before means that voters know who he is, but he also has much higher unfavorables than the other Republicans in the race,” said Dan Cassino, a Professor of Government and Politics at FDU, and the executive director of the Poll. “He’s currently in the strongest position, but these numbers show how tenuous that advantage is.”

In a primary election, only members of a party get to vote, so whether voters are Democrats or Republicans matters less than ideological groups within those parties. The largest ideological group in New Jersey are self-described moderates: 38 percent of Democrats and 21 percent of Republicans say that they’re moderate, but they’re outnumbered in the Republican Party by conservatives (53 percent of Republicans) and MAGA voters (46 percent of Republicans).

While Spadea’s role as a radio host seems to have translated into greater name recognition than some of his opponents, it has not meant greater levels of favorability: fully 22 percent of Republicans say that they know who he is, but don’t have an opinion about him either way. Given that only 54 percent of Republicans recognize Spadea, this indicates that he has failed to make an impression on a bit less than half of the Republicans who recognize him, despite his media platform.

“The large number of Republicans who don’t have an opinion about Spadea means that he has room to grow his support,” said Cassino. “But to do that, he’ll have to break through in media coverage, something that’s proving hard for everyone in the race.”

One warning sign for Ciattarelli comes in his unfavorablity ratings among MAGA voters. While Ciattarelli has higher favorablity numbers among this group – 45 percent – he also has much higher unfavorability numbers, at 17 percent. In contrast, only 10 percent of MAGA voters say that they have a negative view of Spadea.

Dividing up Republicans by ideology shows a clear division between conservative and MAGA voters versus the less numerous moderates in the Party. Ciattarelli leads in favorability among the self-identified MAGA and conservative voters who make up the majority of the Party, but the race is much tighter among moderates. Among this group, his net favorability – favorable minus unfavorable –  is tied with Spadea and Durr, despite his much higher name recognition.

“Bramnick has been banking on a revival of the moderate lane in the Party, but it doesn’t seem to be getting him anywhere yet,” said Cassino. “It’s not clear if there are enough moderates left in the Party to balance out the growing number of MAGA supporters.”

Traditionally, older voters are more likely to vote in primaries than younger ones, and among the oldest voters, Ciattarelli is seen much more favorably than his opponents. A majority (54 percent) of Republicans 65 and over have favorable views of the 2021 nominee, compared to just 13 percent among his closest competitor in this group, Bramnick. Among Republicans under the age of 45, Ciattarelli, Spadea and Durr are essentially tied in favorability, even given Ciatterilli’s lead in name recognition.

“Young Republicans in the state just don’t look like older ones: they’re much more likely to be MAGA voters and even describe themselves as libertarian or nationalist,” said Cassino. “If they turn out in large numbers, this is a very different race than one that’s dominated by older voters.”

Name recognition and favorability are imperfect measures of electoral support, as many Republicans have favorable views of multiple candidates: the fact that a candidate has higher favorability does not necessarily mean that he will do better in a primary election. However, favorability can be seen as an upper limit on a candidate’s support, as well as a measure of the extent to which a candidate has successfully been able to market themselves to a statewide audience. A model that looked at likely voters – rather than all Republicans, as in this poll –  would provide more clarity, but in the absence of a recent competitive primary election in New Jersey that such a model could be based on, any likely voter model necessarily contains a great deal of uncertainty.

 

Methodology

The survey was conducted between February 23 and 28, 2025, using a voter list of registered voters in New Jersey carried out by Braun Research of Princeton, New Jersey. Respondents were contacted via either live caller telephone interviews, or text-to-web surveys sent to cellular phones, resulting in an overall sample of 1,476 registered voters in the state, including an oversample of Newark residents who were randomly assigned to some, but not all, of the sections in the main survey. The data presented in this release contains approximately 240 respondents from this oversample. Surveys were carried out via live caller telephone interviews to landlines (191) and cellphones (319) and the remainder (966) 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 registered voters in New Jersey. 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. This weighting process means that the oversample of Newark resident, carried out in conjunction with a simultaneous poll of Newark residents, does not skew the results of the poll towards any particular group, and the results are not substantively different if this oversample is not included in the results.

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 1.3, largely driven by the weights used on the race/ethnicity variable.

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 1,476 registered voters is +/-2.9 percentage points, at a 95 percent confidence interval. Including the design effects, the margin of error would be +/-3.8 percentage points, though the figure not including them is much more commonly reported. For the subsample of 430 Republicans, the simple sampling error is +/-4.7 percentage points, at a 95 percent confidence interval

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 proud 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.

Weighted Telephone Sample Characteristics

1,476 Registered Voters in New Jersey

Figures do not include individuals who declined to answer demographic items.

 

Man

47%                 N = 698

Woman

51%                 N = 754

Some Other Way

0.4%               N = 4

 

18-30

17%                N = 251

31-44

23%                 N = 336

45-64

36%                 N = 534

65+

24%                 N = 347

 

White

67%                N = 987

Black

13%                N = 190

Hispanic/Latino/a

12%                N = 173

Asian

3%                  N = 42

Other/Multi-racial

3%                  N = 44

 

No college degree

54%                N = 790

College degree or more

44%                N = 645

 

Democrat (including leaners)

48%                N = 347

Independent (no lean)

7%                  N = 51

College degree or more

45%                N = 323

 

Question Wording and Order

[Earlier questions held for later release]

Now, we’d like to ask you a few questions about the upcoming Gubernatorial Election

D1. In politics today, do you consider yourself a Democrat, Republican, Independent, or something else?

1. Democrat
2. Republican
3. Independent  [ASK D1A]
4. Something Else/Other
5. DK/Ref [vol]

D1A. [Ask only if D1 is 3] Which way do you lean?

1. Democrat
2. Republican
3. Independent
4. Something Else/Other
5. DK/Ref [vol]

[Respondents only asked about candidates in their party; non-leaning independents excluded from candidate questions]

In June, both Republicans and Democrats will be having primary elections to pick their candidates for governor. I’m going to [read/show] you a list of potential candidates in this year’s race for Governor of New Jersey. For each, just tell me if you’ve heard of them or not, and, if you have heard of them, whether you have a favorable or unfavorable view of them.

[Order of Names  Randomized

D1. Democratic Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop

D2. Democratic Member of Congress Mikie Sherrill

D3. Democratic Member of Congress Josh Gottheimer

D4. Democratic Newark Mayor Ras Baraka

D5. Democratic Former State Senator Steve Sweeney

D6. Democratic Former Mayor of Montclair/ President of the NJEA Sean Spiller [Randomize how this candidate is presented: half get Montclair Mayor, half get NJEA president]

R1. Republican Talk Show Host Bill Spadea

R2. Republican State Senator Jon Bramnick

R3. Republican Former Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli

R4. Republican Former State Senator Ed Durr

1. Haven’t Heard of Them
2. Favorable Opinion
3. Unfavorable Opinion
4. Heard of Them, No Opinion
5. Don’t Know [Vol]
6. Refused [Vol]

[Intervening questions held for later release]

Just a few more questions, for statistical purposes

D1B. Which of the following terms would you use to describe your political views? You can choose as many as you like. [Shuffle Order]

1. Liberal
2. Moderate
3. Conservative
4. Socialist
5. Progressive
6. Libertarian
7. Make America Great Again or MAGA
8. Nationalist

D2A. To ensure we are reaching people of all ages, would you please tell me your age?

____    (ENTER AGE: 98=98+, 99 = REFUSED)

[IF Don’t Know/REFUSED IN QD1, ASK:]

D2B.  Would you be willing to tell us whether it’s between...?

1. Under 30
2. 31 to 44
3. 45 to 64
4. 65 or over
5. [Refused]

D3. What was the last grade in school you completed? [CODE TO LIST]

1. Did not complete High School
2. High School Diploma or equivalent
3. Vocational or Trade School
4. Some college, but no degree
5. Associates, or other 2 year degree
6. Bachelor’s Degree
7. Graduate work, such as Law, MBA, Medical School, or similar
8. Refused (VOL)

D4. How would you describe your sex? Do you describe yourself as ...

1. A Man
2. A Woman
3. Some other way
4. [DK/REF]

D5. How would you describe your racial and ethnic background? You can pick as many as you’d like.

1. White
2. Black
3. Asian
4. Hispanic/Latino/a/Spanish
5. Other or Multi-Racial
6. [Dk/Ref]

 

 

 

Release Tables

 

How would you describe your political views? [Multiple Responses Accepted]
	Overall	Democrats	Republicans
Moderate	31%	38%	21%
Conservative	26%	10%	53%
Liberal	23%	46%	4%
MAGA	18%	2%	46%
Progressive	18%	32%	4%
Libertarian	8%	6%	8%
Socialist	7%	11%	1%
Nationalist	5%	3%	5%

 

Percent reporting favorable views
	Republicans	Conservative	MAGA	Moderate
Ciattarelli	39%	47%	45%	32%
Spadea	22%	24%	22%	26%
Durr	21%	20%	25%	24%
Bramnick	18%	18%	24%	19%

 

Percent reporting unfavorable views
	Republicans	Conservative	MAGA	Moderate
Ciattarelli	15%	15%	17%	14%
Spadea	10%	12%	10%	8%
Durr	7%	7%	5%	2%
Bramnick	8%	9%	7%	7%

 

Net Favorable (Favorable - Unfavorable)
	Republicans	Conservative	MAGA	Moderate
Ciattarelli	+24	+32	+28	+18
Spadea	+12	+12	+13	+18
Durr	+14	+13	+20	+21
Bramnick	+10	+8	+17	+12

 

 

 

Overall Name Recognition (including those without opinion)
	Republicans	Conservative	MAGA	Moderate
Ciattarelli	78%	84%	81%	76%
Spadea	54%	59%	55%	55%
Durr	41%	42%	44%	43%
Bramnick	43%	41%	46%	47%

 

Percent reporting favorable views
	Republicans	Under 30	31-44	45-64	65+
Ciattarelli	39%	23%	31%	40%	54%
Spadea	22%	27%	29%	26%	8%
Durr	21%	31%	31%	21%	5%
Bramnick	18%	25%	21%	17%	13%

 

Overall Name Recognition (including those without opinion)
	Republicans	Under 30	31-44	45-64	65+
Ciattarelli	78%	59%	82%	79%	82%
Spadea	54%	52%	66%	57%	43%
Durr	41%	47%	53%	40%	27%
Bramnick	43%	53%	47%	44%	32%