President Barack Obama is maintaining a lead over Mitt Romney among New Jersey voters surveyed despite concerns about the way he's doing his job.
A Fairleigh Dickinson University PublicMind poll shows Obama 13 percentage points ahead of the Republican. A survey in May showed Obama up by 14 points.
"Say what you want about New Jersey, but our residents can't be pigeonholed politically," said Krista Jenkins, executive director of PublicMind and professor of political science. "We have a Republican governor with strong approval, and yet registered voters are leaning heavily toward Democratic candidates for the White House and U.S. Senate."
Only a third of the New Jersey registered voters surveyed, however, believe the country is moving in the right direction, and 49% approve of the way Obama is handling his job.
Incumbent Sen. Robert Menendez is favored over state Sen. Joe Kyrillos by 12 points, 45% to 33%, according to the poll.
"As voter attention begins to turn more closely to the election, Sen. Kyrillos doesn’t appear to have a lot of baggage weighing him down," said Jenkins. "This could work to his advantage given the double digit lead that Senator Menendez has going into the general election."
The telephone survey of 945 registered and unregistered voters has a sampling error of 3.3 percentage points.
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