Booker Blows Away Democratic Pack In New Senate Poll

Newark Mayor Cory Booker is blowing away his Democrat competition in a bid for a U.S. Senate seat, according to a new poll released Tuesday.

Booker, who is running against U.S. Reps. Rush Holt (D-12) and Frank Pallone (D-6) and state Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver (D-34) in the Democratic special primary scheduled for Aug. 13, leads his nearest competitor by more than 40 percentage points in the latest Quinnipiac poll.

In a Democratic primary, Booker has 52 percent, with 10 percent for Pallone, 8 percent for Holt and 3 percent for Oliver. Another 26 percent are undecided, according to the poll.

Booker has lost little ground since the same poll released on June 10, before Oliver announced her candidacy. In that poll, Booker had 53 percent, with 10 percent for Holt and 9 percent for Pallone, according to the poll.

On the Republican side, former Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan tops his competitor Alieta Eck by a huge margin: 62 percent to 5 percent, with 28 percent undecided, the poll says.

In a general election, the poll, finds Booker winning the Senate seat handily against Lonegan, 53 percent to 30 percent.

The only way that the seat goes to Lonegan is if he’s matched against Oliver, in which case he wins by a slight margi--37 percent to 35 percent.

"It looks as if the speculation was right: Newark Mayor Cory Booker seems to be a shoo-in for the U.S. Senate," said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, in a release.

From July 2 to 7, Quinnipiac University surveyed 1,068 New Jersey voters with a margin of error of +/- 3 percentage points. Live interviewers call land lines and cell phones. The survey includes 400 Democrats with a margin of error of +/- 4.9 percentage points and 330 Republicans with a margin of error of +/- 5.4 percentage points, according to a release.