Is the New Jersey governor’s race more about sending a message to Washington or effecting change in a state beset with problems?

The bad news for New Jersey Republicans is that the Garden State is still a blue state with an overabundant population of registered Democrats, most of whom can be counted on to vote the party line in November’s off-year elections.

As such, Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill remains the front-runner to succeed Governor Phil Murphy, according to the latest Fairleigh Dickinson University poll released Tuesday. In that survey, she beats the GOP’s gubernatorial nominee, Jack Ciattarelli, by eight points (45 percent to 37 percent).

The good news for Republicans in this survey can be found both in the number of undecided independent voters (a whopping 41 percent) and the fact that New Jersey residents seem inclined toward the GOP when they are compelled to contemplate their own personal circumstances.

“Ciattarelli gained 7 points among independents who received questions about New Jersey-focused topics, but he lost 4 points among independents who heard questions on national topics,” the New Jersey Globe explained. “Sherrill lost 2 points among independents who heard Jersey-focused questions and gained 1 point among independents who received questions about national issues.”

FDU’s polling unit explains how they conducted this “experiment”:

Respondents were first asked which candidate they would support in the governor’s race. Then, they were randomly assigned to get a series of questions either about local issues like energy, flooding and NJ Transit, or a series of questions about national issues, like President Trump and immigration. Afterwards, they were again asked about their preference in the governor’s race. None of these questions mentioned the governor’s race, or any stances taken by either candidate.

The respective candidates in this race are probably aware of this dynamic. As the FDU poll’s executive director, Dan Cassino, observed, Ciattarelli is as focused on local issues as he has been because his pathway to the governor’s mansion depends on getting New Jersey voters to focus on New Jersey issues — and, by implication, the degree to which those issues have been mishandled by Democrats over the last eight years. “The more nationalized this race is, the worse Ciattarelli does overall,” Cassino observed, “even as it helps him a bit among Republicans.”

So, expect Sherrill to make the remainder of the race a referendum on Donald Trump and Republican governance in Washington. Her hope is that New Jersey voters will regard their ballot as a way to send a message to Washington, even if the message they inadvertently convey to Trenton is perverse: Don’t change — things are going great!

Sherrill’s problem is that things are not going great in the Garden State. Residents are experiencing a significant increase in the cost of their electric and gas bills. Flooding and flood insurance are a growing headache for residents in high-risk areas. Property taxes keep going up — a condition that led Trenton Democrats to embrace gimmicks like the “Senior Freeze,” which provides the state’s most reliable voters with tax relief at the expense of the state’s budgetary health, to say nothing of civic propriety. According to a recent Rutgers-Eagleton poll, 80 percent of New Jerseyans are “somewhat” or “very dissatisfied” with how the state government has managed residents’ tax burden. Eighty-five percent say the same about the cost of living in the Garden State.

If this is what voters have on their minds come November, Ciattarelli might outperform his polling just as he did in 2021. There are some structural odds in his favor. Murphy just barely managed to win reelection four years ago, becoming the first Democrat to eke out two terms in the governor’s mansion since Brendan Byrne. No party has won three consecutive gubernatorial elections in New Jersey since the 1960s, so it would be unwise to count Ciattarelli out.

But it has been a long time since the aphorism Tip O’Neill made famous — that “all politics is local” — has been empirically observable, and Trump’s brand of politics is unpopular in the state. Sherrill and company hope that the voters’ anti-MAGA antipathy alone will be sufficient to carry her over the finish line in November, and it may well be.