President Donald Trump is changing the face of one Democratic stronghold that many people believed was not possible.
A new poll conducted by Emerson College/Pix 11/The Hill and published on Thursday found that New Jersey voters approve more of the president than they do of the state’s Democrat Gov. Phil Murphy, Breitbart News reported on the heels of a survey that shows Republicans making big gains in the state during the age of Trump.
It showed that the president was even with Murphy, with both at a 47 percent approval and disapproval rating.
In the same poll, the Democratic governor only had a 40 percent approval rating and a 45 percent disapproval, with 15 percent of those polled having no opinion on him.
And the president, who was walloped by former Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton by 14 points in 2016, closed the gap significantly in the 2024 presidential election, where former Vice President Kamala Harris defeated him by only 5.9 points.
“Trump’s rise in New Jersey is more than a polling quirk—it is a symptom of the deeper disillusionment of a forgotten electorate. Compared to his dismal 38% approval in 2020, Trump has gained nearly 18 net points in five years. The self-anointed progressives who run Trenton and dominate Newark, Camden, and Paterson may have the numbers on paper, but they are losing the pulse of the people,” Jason Corley, a pollster for Quantus Insights, said.
“In the 2024 presidential contest, Kamala Harris eked out a 5.91% victory in New Jersey—a stunning 10-point drop from Biden’s 2020 margin. That’s a 10.1% swing toward the Republican ticket, second only to New York in the nation. Trump flipped counties long assumed to be safe for Democrats: Gloucester, Passaic, Atlantic, Cumberland, and even Morris. This wasn’t a surge so much as a shift—a groundswell building under the feet of a party too preoccupied with cultural crusades and regulatory overreach to see the ground cracking beneath them,” he said.
Much of the change can be attributed to people like Republican Scott Presler, who has dedicated his time to registering new voters in the Garden State.
“Since 2020, Republicans have added roughly 152,000 voters in New Jersey—a 9.8% increase. Democrats grew more slowly, up 129,000, or 5.2%. Unaffiliated voter registration declined slightly, but independents still make up over a third of the electorate. And in a state with semi-closed primaries and a vanishing county line system, these independents may finally become the kingmakers,” Corley said.
And the coming election for governor may finally result in a Republican winning the state — the first since Chris Christie sat in the governor’s mansion.
“The 2021 gubernatorial race was a canary in the coal mine. Murphy, who cruised to a 14-point victory in 2017, barely hung on with 3.2% in 2021 against Republican Jack Ciattarelli. It was a political tremor that national media largely ignored. Now, with the 2025 gubernatorial race looming, the GOP smells opportunity,” the pollster said.
“Ciattarelli may run again. If he does, he won’t be alone. The abolition of the party-line system could open the field to Trump-aligned outsiders, independents, or populist insurgents. The state’s political elite may soon find themselves facing challengers they can neither predict nor control,” Corley noted.
But the pollster urged caution for Republicans as Democrats still have around a 900,000 registered voter edge in the state.
“But New Jersey is no longer a lock. It’s a fight. And in a nation increasingly fractured along cultural, economic, and geographic lines, the Garden State may soon find itself less a Democratic fortress than a battlefield,” he said.
“If the GOP can maintain momentum, speak clearly to working families, and offer candidates who challenge not just the left, but the stale remnants of its own establishment, then New Jersey may not just shift red. It may do so with thunder,” he said.