On Monday, Gravis Marketing released a poll showing Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez leading his Republican challenger, Bob Hugin, by only two points.
That’s a weird number. If you’ve been following the 2018 Senate races, you probably know that New Jersey, where Menendez is running, isn’t supposed to be a marquee race. The Garden State is very blue (Hillary Clinton won it by 14 points in 2016) and Menendez is on the ballot in a year when Democrats seem to have a big advantage.
So why do the latest numbers show a close race?
There’s always the possibility that Gravis (and Fairleigh Dickinson, who showed a four-point lead for Menendez in May) got weird samples and that Menendez is ahead by a larger margin. Earlier polls from Monmouth and Quinnipiac showed a double digit lead for the incumbent.
But Menendez also has a record of ethical problems. In 2015, he was indicted on charges that included bribery and fraud. The Justice Department cleared Menendez of these charges earlier this year, but the Senate Ethics Committee still admonished him. This isn’t the first time Menendez has had ethical issues—in 2006 he was investigated for collecting $300,000 in rent from a non-profit while helping them get funding from a congressman.
These problems may be harming him both in the polls and at the ballot box.
His approval rating was 40 percent in the Gravis poll and 37 percent in a Monmouth poll taken earlier this year. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, on the other hand, had a 50-percent approval rating in Gravis and a 54-percent approval rating in Monmouth. In the Fairleigh-Dickinson poll, 33 percent gave Menendez a favorable rating while 55 percent gave Booker a favorable rating.
Booker and Menendez have different public personas, so the comparison is imperfect. But it’s not crazy to look at Booker’s numbers and think that Menendez would be more popular if he didn’t have so many ethical problems.
And his issues aren’t just a problem in public opinion polls. Lisa McCormick, an under-funded, relatively unknown Democratic primary challenger, got 38 percent of the vote against Menendez in the state’s June primary. Menendez still won, but McCormick’s showing demonstrates Democratic discontentment with Menendez.
So are his personal and ethical issues a big enough problem to sink him in November? Possibly. But he’s definitely the favorite right now.
All the major handicappers give Menendez a real advantage over Hugin. RealClearPolitics puts Menendez in the “Leans Democratic” category, the same category that Montana Sen. Jon Tester is in (RCP also puts Texas, where Ted Cruz is running for re-election, in the “Leans Republican” column). Cook Political marks it as Likely Democratic (putting Menendez in the same category as Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey, Tester, and Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin). Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball also sees it as Likely Democratic, the same rating they give to swing state Democratic incumbents like Sherrod Brown and Debbie Stabenow. Inside Elections rates the race as Solid Democratic.
And SwingSeat, our Senate forecast model, agrees that he’s the favorite. When the model only looks at polls, it gives Menendez a roughly 3-to-1 chance of winning. And if we tell it to ignore the polls and just look at “fundamentals” (i.e. presidential approval, past statewide presidential results, incumbency, etc.), SwingSeat finds that a generic Democratic incumbent would have a 99-percent chance of holding the seat.
Put simply, Menendez’s problems create an opening for Hugin, but it’s small. There are different ways to look at this race, but in almost all of them Menendez has a solid, if not overwhelming advantage.
That shouldn’t come as a surprise—New Jersey is a very blue state. Menendez could under-perform the fundamentals and still hold the seat. Barring something highly unexpected happening, that’s what you should bet on.
