Rutgers N.J. Poll: Obama leads Romney by 14 points

As the Republican National Convention begins in Tampa, New Jersey voters give President Barack Obama a 14-point lead over former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney, according to a new Rutgers-Eagleton Poll. Among likely voters polled just before the GOP convention, 51 percent say they would vote for Obama while 37 percent support Romney. Another 6 percent prefer someone else, and 5 percent are not sure.


"The president leads in New Jersey primarily because of his personal qualities,” said David Redlawsk, director of the Rutgers-Eagleton Poll and professor of political science at Rutgers University. “Voters like him better and feel he shares their values and cares about them. While Romney keeps it closer on the hard issue of the economy, and wins easily on leadership, voters generally prefer to support someone they like over someone they don’t.”

Results are from a poll of 916 registered New Jersey voters conducted with both landline and cell phone households Aug. 23-25; 710 respondents are identified as likely voters and are the focus of this release. The likely voter sample has a margin of error of +/- 3.5 percentage points.



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