Poll: Kerry edges Bush among N.J. voters

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry is slightly ahead of President Bush in a poll of registered voters in New Jersey, a state that Democrat Al Gore won in 2000 by almost 16 percentage points.
Forty-six percent of the respondents support Kerry, 43 percent support Bush, and 5 percent say they support independent candidate Ralph Nader, according to a Quinnipiac poll released Thursday.
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Kerry's popularity is low in New Jersey. Twenty-seven percent viewed Kerry favorably, 28 percent unfavorably, and 33 percent had mixed feelings, according to the poll.
"Despite all the bad news out of Iraq, President Bush is threatening to make a horse race out of New Jersey, a state everyone had put in the 'safe' column for John Kerry," said Clay F. Richards, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. Just over half said they approve of Bush's job performance.
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http://www.boston.com/news/politics/president/bush/articles/2004/05/20/poll_bush_kerry_almost_even_in_nj/

New Jersey should be solid blue for Kerry. If we're only ahead by that much then we have a problem.

Quinnipiac got these numbers from, maybe they took a poll of 30 republicans in Cape May County?????

The Rasmussen poll had Kerry up 51 - 39 here in NJ, that was about 2 weeks ago, and through my own experience with people here (I travel the state for a living, and speak to dozens of people every day), I'd take this poll with a grain of salt.....

There is no "problem" in the Garden State.

Kerry is headed for landslide.

Maybe this was a bad sample. It doesn't make sense that Gore won NJ with 16 percentage points more than Bush, while Kerry is only ahead three.

here's the link to the poll results:

http://www.quinnipiac.edu/x11300.xml

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"Despite all the bad news out of Iraq, President Bush is threatening to make a horse race out of New Jersey, a state everyone had put in the 'safe' column for John Kerry. Actually it's not a case of the President doing so well in New Jersey -- his approval rating remains in negative territory -- but John Kerry is just not catching on. His favorability rating is a mediocre 27 - 28 percent, with 33 percent mixed and 13 percent of the voters say they haven't heard enough about him to form an opinion," said Clay F. Richards, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
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there are some strange things in there, for example, who the hell are the 15% of "Democrats" who believe bush would do a better job than Kerry in Iraq? Who are the 24% of "Democrats" who believe bush would do a better job "on terrorism" than Kerry, unless they mean bush would do a better job at CREATING terrorists than Kerry would, in which case, I also agree.....

It seems to me to be a case of being just too early in the season, and alot of people, unforunately, don't pay much attention until it gets closer to Election Day.....

a better job on this or that as "lousy polling"....according to this issue of Time and their poll, I see that about twice as many Democrats think Bush is a-okay as Republicans that think that Bush stinks. It's like 26% of us. It's the war, honey, that has a bunch of males, for example, thinking this way. So don't go to bed, anyone here, thinking that stats like these are some aborition. They aren't. There are a number of "won by a good margin by Al" states that could be flushed this time unless we can drive them out to vote and pull us through by just a few percentage points.