Posted on 11/01/2009 5:29:37 AM PST by MaestroLC
Just days before selecting their next governor, New Jersey voters are clearly divided. The only sure bet from the latest Monmouth University/Gannett New Jersey Poll is that the winner will be either a Republican or a Democrat.
As of Friday night, challenger Chris Christie held an insignificant one point lead over incumbent Jon Corzine among likely voters, 43% to 42%. Two weeks ago, the race was tied at 39% each. Independent Chris Daggett has faded to 8%, after reaching 14% in the previous poll.
Republican voters give 86% support to their party’s nominee, compared to 6% for Corzine and 5% for Daggett. Democratic voters give 77% support to their party’s nominee, compared to 11% for Christie and 9% for Daggett.
“This election will be defined by turnout like few others before it. Many Democrats are sitting on the sidelines and not considered to be likely voters at this point. They may be unenthusiastic about their governor, but can they be prodded to the polls for other reasons? If not, Christie may eke out the win,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute.
A key dynamic in this race has been the vacillations of independent voters. The GOP nominee Christie now garners a 51% majority with this important voting bloc compared to just 29% for Democrat Corzine. The major shift is a drop in Daggett’s support from 22% of independent voters two weeks ago to just 10% in the current poll.
“Independent voters are simply unhappy with the job Governor Corzine has done over the past four years. After a brief flirtation with Daggett’s candidacy, many seem to have returned to Christie as their best chance for change,” said Murray.
Jon Corzine’s job performance rating stands at 35% approve to 55% disapprove among likely voters, including an anemic 21% to 69% among independents.
The governor’s personal rating stands at 39% favorable to 49% unfavorable, which has been fairly stable since July.
The Republican’s ratings, though, have rebounded from the steady slide they experienced throughout the year. Currently, voter opinion of Chris Christie stands at 44% favorable to 36% unfavorable. It had dipped to 40% favorable to 41% unfavorable in mid-October.
“Political operatives live by the mantra that negative ads work. That may be true, but there is also a tipping point where too many negative ads can backfire. Perhaps we have reached that point in this race,” said Murray.
Fully 73% of New Jersey voters say that Jon Corzine has unfairly attacked Chris Christie. A smaller majority of 54% say Christie has done the same against the governor. Independents are more likely to say that Corzine (78%) rather than Christie (46%) has launched unfair assaults. Unsurprisingly, Republicans agree, with 82% saying Corzine has attacked unfairly and 37% saying the same about Christie. On the other hand, Democratic voters are equally as likely to blame both Corzine (62%) and Christie (68%) for unfair attacks in this campaign.
The poll also found that independent candidate Chris Daggett’s personal rating is now 22% favorable to 22% unfavorable, which is less positive than the 28% to 15% rating he held two weeks ago. A majority (56%) of likely voters still say they don’t know enough to form an opinion about him.
The shift in voter opinion of Daggett is particularly pronounced among Republicans, going from a net positive 29% to 15% in mid-October to a net negative 18% to 30% in the current poll. “It seems that a good number of Republicans have gone from seeing Daggett as a credible candidate to an unwelcome spoiler,” said Murray.
Some observers have speculated that the conservative wing of the Republican Party may withhold support for their nominee. However, the poll found that 90% of Republican voters who say they supported Steve Lonegan in the GOP primary are backing Chris Christie in the general election, which is statistically similar to the 95% who initially backed Christie in June and still support him today.
*****
Here are the internals:
The telephone interviews were collected on October 28-30, 2009 with a statewide random sample of 1,041 likely voters.
40% = Dem | 34% = Ind | 26% = Rep
What do you think?
If the Republican was actually a conservative he’d be walking away with this.
How much, if anything, did his aide getting busted for Ecstasy pills for sale have any emotional impact on the voters,? It just speaks to corruption in a very general way...it is not a big deal overall, but still, it may make some voters be reminded of corruption in general.
With all the corruption in NJ politics, there are probably lots of people worried about what might happen to them with a Republican as Governor. Democrats generally protect their own, and I would look for a lot of people to ‘pull out all stops’ to stop Christie from winning (i.e. vote fraud etc.).
Do the dead vote in NJ ?
Since the article states that Daggett supporters now see him as being a spoiler by a significant margin, it can be reasonable to say that they are breaking for Christie. We may have a better read on this point on Monday when final polls are released and analyzed.
Same election day M.O. as all Rat states.
Only if they are registered!
In general...when it is close, the incumbent wins.....
Especially in northeast liberal demoncratic states were demoncrats vote twice and their dead get one vote....
NJ deserves what it gets if that is the case....
Corzine is a liberal, race baiting, socialist, freedom hating, gun bashing scumball.....
Repeatedly.
If it weren’t for all the rampant cheating, I would expect that Christie would win this race by a fairly clear margin Tuesday. Daggett should lose about half of his overall support and the majority of that would normally go to Christie given Corzine’s hideous approval numbers.
That’s if it were a fair contest, but in NJ, I don’t expect a fair contest.
Corzine former girlfriend Karla directed the union support last time. She will be doing the same thing this time. The unions will pull this bad politician out of the hole. Corzine isn’t going anywhere. This is New Jersey. Even though NJ arrested 40 Democrat politicians (including 2 mayors) the Democrat party will be out there working for the Obama guy.
VOTER FRAUD ALERT
Man the polling stations or lose the election
I too have a feeling that it will be a close race, and it’s impossible to tell even for me, who will come out on top in what will surely be a “squeaker”. I live in Bergen County NJ, and I can see , at least where I live, (upper middle class Allendale, NJ) that there are NO Corzine signs, but PLENTY of Christie signs. HOWEVER, just yesterday I was working all day in heavily Hispanic West New York NJ, and saw a mobile advertising billboard, complete with spanish language exhortations, being driven around Bergenline Ave., extolling the ‘virtues’ of Corzine, and depicting him with Obama, who was front and center on the picture, speaking from a lectern. There is a huge population centered in cities like Newark, Camden, way further south, and so many others, which will automatically vote for the Dem, even though it’s ALWAYS demonstrably untrue that this Dem has done ANYTHING to help you and your own situation-—Corzine’s electability however is tied exclusively to how well Obama is doing, and , unfortunately , whether Obama is doing well or not in the big picture, that might not even figure very much into whether they vote for Corzine or not.
Corzine will be re-elected by these sizable pockets of inner city residents who always vote for Dems, and who we, in the wealthier and quieter suburbs, ALWAYS forget exist in this state.
Yes, with Chicago mailing addresses. There was one example where 15 democrats were registered to a bush planted on the side of the Kennedy Expressway. This was duplicated on all the other expressways in Chicago except the Eisenhower, which is the only Republican expressway in Chicago.
Independents breaking HARD GOP at the last minute, just as they broke HARD Obama last November.
He needs a vote-counting czar, not just ACORN. /sarc>
Cheers!
This is NJ. Wait for the ACORN / SEIU vote to be counted and recounted before you count the socialist Corzine out. Maybe we’ll see Al Frankin’s recount team make an appearence after the election. We have to pray for a significant win and not just a squeaker or gaurenteed it’ll go to Corzine in the recount.
An aide getting busted for Ecstasy pills is a story I have not even heard of, and I am pretty well tuned into this type of news, since I live here in NJ. How much play after all, did the much stronger ‘story’ about Corzine’s private email memo to an aide to try to find some statistics they could gin up to show he has actually “brought” or created jobs to New Jersey? That was an outright admission of failure, but it disappeared as soon as everyone heard the ‘blip’ it created. These things have NO effect, the MSM does NOT get on top of them. Here’s the problem: when the trolls who live in the basement of the DNC, are so busy creating DISinformation of their own for so long, and so creatively, and its this disinformation that floods the airwaves and print media, the truth itself is forced to morph into a version of the boy who cried wolf, and it suffers death by a thousand cuts: the electorate is deluged with millions of undigestible bits of hearsay, she said/he said, allegations, possibilities, that they grow weary of even paying attention, and begin to doubt it ALL. THAT IS THE ENTIRE PURPOSE OF DISINFORMATION, TO MUDDY THE WATERS, CLOUD ALL ISSUES, AND UNDERMINE THE TRUTH.
Camden and Essex counties historically have had one of the most reliable democrat leaning graveyard votes in statewide elections.
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