The 2024 presidential contest is shaping up to be the most crazy election cycle ever. Joe Biden tried to put Trump in prison. Democrats tried to get Trump removed from the ballot. And now, Democrats are trying to force Biden to drop out.
What's going to happen next? It's anyone's guess. How many more states will Trump be competitive in? Minnesota and Virginia are already considered battlegrounds. New Hampshire now appears to be close. What about New Jersey?
Perhaps it's not so far-fetched.
Back in May, Donald Trump held a massive rally in New Jersey, during which he told the crowd that New Jersey is in play and that he thinks he can win it.
“As you can see today, we’re expanding the electoral map because … we’re going to win the state of New Jersey,” Trump said. “I think we’re going to win them all. All across America, millions of people, so-called blue states, are joining our movement based on love, intelligence, and a thing called common sense.”
At the time, I scoffed at the idea.
"I'd love to believe that New Jersey is in play," I wrote. "For what it's worth, while there isn't a lot of polling out of the Garden State, most recent polling shows a tighter race there than we've seen in recent elections."
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At the time, the most recent public poll that RealClearPolitics tracked was an Emerson College poll showing Biden beating Trump by seven points — which was significantly tighter than the 16 points Biden won the state by in 2020. So while there had been a significant shift in Trump's favor in the state, that hardly put it in battleground territory. Naturally, I figured Trump was just trying to pump up the crowd by exaggerating his chances in Jersey.
It just so happens that Trump may have been onto something. According to a new poll released the day of the debate, Trump is leading Biden in New Jersey by a point.
"A new poll released on Thursday conducted by co/Efficient shows Trump leading Biden in New Jersey with 41 percent versus Biden's 40 percent, with 13 percent undecided and 7 percent supporting independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or another third party candidate," reports Newsweek. "The poll, with a sample of 810 likely general election voters in New Jersey, was conducted from June 26 to 27 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.42 percent."
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The poll found that Trump holds a 45% approval rating and a 50% disapproval rating in the Garden State, and while that doesn't sound great, it's actually better than Biden's. He has an approval rating of 36% and a disapproval rating of 56%
"President Trump continues to expand the electoral map as Americans understand the dangers of a Biden presidency," Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung told Newsweek in response to the poll.
I honestly have no idea if Trump truly has a chance of winning New Jersey — I certainly wouldn't make any assumptions based on this one poll — but one thing is for sure: Trump's electoral map is expanding, and I won't rule anything out now.
