Lautenberg widens lead to 16 points in N.J. poll

A new poll indicates Democratic U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg has widened his lead over Republican challenger Dick Zimmer.

In the Monmouth University/Gannett New Jersey Poll released yesterday, likely voters favored the incumbent, 52 to 36 percent, with 8 percent undecided. In a September poll, Lautenberg led by 10 percentage points.

Just 12 percent of respondents in the new poll said they had been paying close attention to the Senate race, compared with 66 percent who said they had been closely following the presidential campaign.

The telephone poll of 900 registered voters was conducted Oct. 15 to Saturday and has a sampling error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points. The margin for the subset of 723 likely voters is plus or minus 4 points.

- AP