John McCain

Barack Obama and Joe Biden are likely to carry New Jersey, according to the most recent independent poll

Yet another poll gives Barack Obama a huge lead over John McCain in New Jersey.

In a Fairleigh Dickinson University Public Mind poll released today, Obama leads McCain by eighteen points – 53% to 35%.  That’s five points higher than the last FDU poll, in which Obama led by 13%. 

The survey shows 80% of voters under 30 planning to cast their ballots for Obama, along with 85% of former Hillary Clinton supporters. 

“From the beginning, the McCain campaign hoped to use disgruntled Clinton supporters to their advantage. If McCain’s strategy in picking Governor Palin for his running mate was to win over former Clinton supporters, Garden State women are clearly not impressed,” said pollster Dan Cassino.

Wall Township Mayor John Devlin would just as soon not have to brave the wildcard impact of a national race.

A Democrat in a Republican town – the first Democratic mayor, in fact, in town history, he says voters know him locally as a nonpartisan elected official.

Although he prefers to run in non-presidential election years, his record is 1-1.

“I won when I ran in 2000, the year Bush beat Gore,” says the mayor. “Then I lost in the 2004 election, when Bush beat Kerry. That was a large turnout election. The Republican community came out in droves."

In Monmouth County, every town comes intriguingly into play on some level, several more critically than others.

Republicans have owned the Freeholder Board for over 20 years, but in the last two elections Democrats picked up two seats to bring them to within one of county control.

A profusion of newly registered Democratic voters have boosted the party’s confidence heading into Nov. 4th, and now Democrats Amy Mallet and Glenn Mason are ready for that 11th hour jolt of cash from the Democratic State Committee.

State Party Chairman Joseph Cryan wants to win here.

He wants it more than he would like to pick up additional warm bodies in the Assembly next year, where his party’s already built a comfortable majority.

A victory by either Mallet or Mason would make a Democratic Party statement.  But neither is a name candidate running against incumbent Freeholder Director Lillian Burry and auto dealer vice president John Curley, an intensely focused campaigner who served as a Red Bank Councilman and has close political connections to state Sen. Jennifer Beck (R-Monmouth).