Well, not promising. 36% and 39% in a Dem state is not a good position to be in. That’s too much ground to make up from people who are not his friends.
Neither is 46-48% as a Dem incumbent. That's the key here. Zimmer's an unknown. His numbers can be moved much easier than Lautenberg's.
As a reminder, New Jersey is the state that gave us this classic governor's race:
For incumbents, the magic number in polling is supposedly 50 percent - the idea being that undecided voters overwhelmingly break for the challenger on Election Day.
One classic case study of this phenomenon was in New Jersey in 1993, when Jim Florio led Christie Whitman in poll after poll - sometimes by double digits - from June all the way until November. But he never surpassed 49 percent - which is exactly what he ended up with on Election Day