TRENTON, NJ (AP) -- A new poll on New Jersey's U.S. Senate race puts incumbent Sen. Frank Lautenberg comfortably ahead of his Republican challenger, Dick Zimmer.
The Fairleigh Dickinson University PublicMind poll out Thursday finds Lautenberg with a 16-point lead over Zimmer, 40 percent to 24 percent.
Poll director Peter Woolley said Zimmer's biggest obstacle is his lack of name recognition.
According to the poll, the former congressman-turned-Washington lobbyist is unknown to 35 percent of voters in his own Republican Party. Overall, three-quarters of those surveyed didn't know Zimmer or had no opinion of him.
At 84 years old, Lautenberg is the third-oldest senator member of the Senate. He is seeking a fifth term.
Zimmer, 63, is hoping to return to elected office after a dozen years in the private sector. He ran unsuccessfully for the Senate in 1996, losing to Robert Torricelli.
The telephone poll of 589 registered New Jersey voters was conducted June 17-22. It has a sampling error margin of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
