Voters Remain Positive on Sherrill, Move Negative on Trump

“Don’t Know” responses to Gov up substantially, driven by Democrat Ambivalence

Fairleigh Dickinson University, Madison, NJ, October 28, 2026 – Governor Mikie Sherrill’s approval ratings have fallen over the past few months, but not because voters are disapproving. According to the latest results from the FDU Poll, New Jersey voters are more likely to say that they “don’t know” how they feel about her than they were earlier in the year. There’s no ambivalence, though, in how Garden State voters feel about Donald Trump, whose approval ratings in the state are now below 30 percent.

“Normally, you’d expect attitudes towards the governor to become more, rather than less, certain over time,” said Dan Cassino, a Professor of Government and Politics at Fairleigh Dickinson University, and the Executive Director of the FDU Poll. “But for whatever reason, Democrats are not as happy with the Governor as they were when she took over.”

Today, 48 percent of New Jersey voters say that they approve of the job Sherrill is doing as governor, with 32 percent disapproving. That approval figure is ten points lower than the 58 percent who said that they approved of her in March, while the disapproving figure – 34 percent earlier in the year – is unchanged.

The drop is driven almost entirely by a shift among Democrats. In March, 88 percent of Democrats said that they approved of the job Sherrill was doing, with only 5 percent saying that they didn’t know, weren’t sure, or declining to answer the question. In the most recent poll, her approval among Democrats has fallen to 71 percent, with only a small increase (from 7 percent to 12 percent) in disapproval. The big increase is in “don’t know” responses, which went from 5 percent to 17 percent, higher than expected for partisans being asked about a governor of their own party. There was a similar shift among independents over the same period, but as independents who don’t lean towards either party make up a smaller portion of the electorate, they don’t impact the overall figures as much. This shift among Democrats is spread across the party, with similar increases in “don’t know” responses among self-identified liberal, progressive and moderate voters. This shift from approval to greater ambivalence also seems tied to sex: Sherrill’s approval among women dropped by 16 points since March, while approval among men stayed almost stable (moving insignificantly from 53 to 50 percent).

“It’s not clear what Sherrill has done to cause voters who should be among her most loyal supporters to distance themselves,” said Cassino. “But whatever it is, this is a blinking yellow light for the administration.”

One possible explanation rests with the changing composition of the Democratic Party in the state. More voters now identify as Democrats than in previous polling, so the change in “I don’t know” responses could reflect the inclusion of voters who were previously independents, or even Republicans. Without panel data tracking individual voters over time, it’s impossible to be sure.

The comparison with the March figures is also complicated by the fact that the current sample is weighted to reflect likely voters in the upcoming midterm elections, while the March figures were weighted to reflect voters in the state more generally. However, re-weighting the current figures to match the weights used in March does not substantially change the results.

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The ambivalence in the Sherrill approval results is not driven by voters being more likely to say “I don’t know” generally, as evidenced by approval of President Trump. Only five percent of New Jersey voters in the same poll said that they “don’t know” how they feel about Trump, with 66 percent disapproving, and just 29 percent saying that they approve.

While Trump still has strong support among the dwindling number of self-identified MAGA voters in the state (95 percent say that they approve of him), his approval is just 68 percent among conservatives, 21 percent among moderates, and 74 percent among Republican voters statewide.

“Trump isn’t running for re-election, but he has made himself the face of the Republican Party,” said Cassino. “The fact that he’s this unpopular means that he’s dragging down Republican candidates in a way that a less visible President might not be.”

While Trump did unexpectedly well in New Jersey in the 2024 Presidential election, helped by low Democratic turnout and greater than normal support among Black and Hispanic voters, any gains he may have made among those groups has faded. Only 36 percent of Hispanic voters in the state now say that they approve of the job he’s doing, with 60 percent disapproving, and his approval among Black voters in New Jersey is just 7 percent.

Methodology

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.

The survey was conducted between October 16 and 22, 2026, 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 805 registered voters in the state. Surveys were carried out via live caller telephone interviews to landlines (132) and cellphones (261) and the remainder (423) 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 likely voters in New Jersey, based on the most recent elections (2024 and 2025). The weights used, like all weights, balance the demographic characteristics of the sample to match known parameters of the electorates in these races. The weighted results used here are balanced to match parameters for sex, age, education, region and race/ethnicity. No weights based on partisanship, ideology, or reported past vote were used.

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 1.5, largely driven by the weights used on the race/ethnicity and age variables.

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 807 registered voters is +/-3.4 percentage points, at a 95 percent confidence interval. Including the design effects, the margin of error would be +/-5.1 percentage points, though the figure not including them is much more commonly reported.

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.

Weighted Telephone Sample Characteristics

807 Likely Voters in New Jersey

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

Man

47%                 N = 382
Woman

52%                 N = 419
Some Other Way

1%                  N = 5

18-30

15%                N = 120
31-44

20%                 N = 161
45-64

34%                 N = 272
65+

31%                 N = 248

White

71%                N = 569
Black

10%                N = 83
Hispanic/Latino/a

9%                  N = 72
Asian

5%                  N = 37
MENA

2%                  N = 19
Other/Multi-racial

2%                 N = 14

No college degree

46%                N = 369
College degree or more

53%                N = 430

Democrat (including leaners)

49%                N = 394
Independent (no lean)

15%                N = 124
Republican (including leaners)

29%                N = 229

Question Wording and Order

P1. Which of the following issues are important to your vote in the upcoming Congressional elections?

Each respondent is randomly assigned to get three of the following six items.

1. Affordability
2. Gas Prices
3. Potential Checks on President Trump’s Power
4. The War in Iran
5. Immigration Policy
6. The status of trans people

Response Options for Each of the Three

1. Important
2. Not Important
3. Don’t Know

P2. How likely are you to vote in the upcoming midterm congressional election?

1. Not at all likely
2. Not very likely
3. Somewhat likely
4. Very likely
5. Or have you already voted?
6. Don’t Know

P3. If you were to vote in the upcoming midterm congressional election, would you vote for the Republican candidate for Congress in your district, the Democratic candidate, [shuffle order of Dem and Rep option] someone else, or are you not sure? [Note: If P2 is 5 (already voted), change wording to “In the upcoming midterm Congressional Election, did you vote for…”]

1. Democratic Candidate
2. Republican Candidate
3. Someone Else
4. Don’t Know

P4. Do you approve or disapprove of the job Donald Trump is doing as President?

1. Approve
2. Disapprove
3. Don’t Know

P5. Do you approve or disapprove of the job Mikie Sherrill is doing as Governor?

1. Approve
2. Disapprove
3. Don’t Know

Further Items Held for Later Release

Release Tables