Frank Lautenberg has hit the magic number: he’s at 51% in a new Rasmussen Reports poll released on Wednesday. That’s the first time in Lautenberg’s 26-year political career that he has hit the fifty percent mark before Labor Day. He leads Republican Dick Zimmer 51%-33%.
It’s also the first time since 1990 that an incumbent statewide officeholder in New Jersey hit fifty percent before Labor Day; that was Bill Bradley, who led Christine Todd Whitman 62%-16% in a July Eagleton/Rutgers poll. Bradley won re-election, the last victory of his career, by a narrow 50%-47% margin.