1988 New Jersey Democratic presidential primary

An exit poll conducted by The New York Times and CBS News indicated that Dukakis had improved his standing with blue-collar voters, with each candidate getting about half, and white voters, with Dukakis winning about 89 percent.^[2]

Unlike previous New Jersey primaries, most voters decided on a candidate well in advance, with 76 percent reporting that they had decided on a candidate more than two weeks before the primary. Among those who had decided before the beginning of the year, Jackson won 60 percent.^[2] Despite Jackson's emphasis of on poverty and drugs, Dukakis won voters who cited each as their top issue.^[2] Jackson improved with black New Jersey voters over his performance in 1984, but performed worse with white voters than he had in 1984 and performed significantly worse with white voters than he had in the earlier primaries in neighboring Pennsylvania and New York.^[2]

The 1988 primary was one of the least competitive in New Jersey in the modern era, leading to calls to move the New Jersey primary earlier in the cycle.^[5]

After the primary, Jackson's supporters challenged the system which awarded him only 12 percent of the delegates despite getting 33 percent of the statewide popular vote. In response, the state Democratic Party awarded him an additional eight delegates on June 21 to the nine he won at the primary, for a total of seventeen.^[6] Academy Award-winning actress Olympia Dukakis, the candidate's cousin, was named an at-large delegate.^[6]