Oct 14 2009
Christie Not In As Much Trouble As Some Speculate
Quinnipiac has come out with a new poll on the NJ governor’s race, which can be spun negatively for the GOP contender (Christie), but once you get into the details shows a strong position:
The New Jersey governor’s race is going down to the wire as Republican challenger Christopher Christie gets 41 percent of likely voters, with 40 percent for Democratic incumbent Gov. Jon Corzine and 14 percent for independent candidate Christopher Daggett, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.
First off, Corzine still polls right at 40%, which is horrible for any incumbent. The “nay” vote against the incumbent is 56%! What this means is there is a clear ‘throw the bum out’ sentiment in the state, and that means voters may decide to shift to Christie on election day if they decide it is better to rid the state of the bum (which is clearly their sentiment) since Daggett has no prayer of wining. The internals show an interesting fact – there are enough undecideds still holding out that can shift this to Christie:
Corzine leads 76 – 11 percent among Democratic likely voters, with 10 percent for Daggett. Christie leads 83 – 8 percent among Republicans, with 7 percent for Daggett, and 41 – 32 percent among independent voters, with 20 percent for Daggett. Independent voters have shifted from 46 – 30 percent for Christie, with 16 percent for Daggett September 1, to 45 – 32 percent for Christie, with 16 percent for Daggett September 30.
If you look at the independents there has not really been a shift to Daggett or Corzine. Christie was +6% in Sept and is up +3% in Oct. That is within the polls MoE (+/- 2.8%). Â In Sept Christie led by 4%, now he leads by 1% – but there is no shift in independents to count for this? I think this is all statistical noise.
I seriously doubt the ‘nay’ voters will allow their vote to be wasted on Daggett come election day. That would keep Corzine in, and NJ clearly wants him out. Common sense may yet rule the day.
I think you may have misread the poll when you say there has been no shift among independants. They stated the results out of sequence in a bit of a misleading way; Let’s see if I can put it in graphical form:
for independant voters only:
date Christie Corzine Daggett
9/1 46% 30% 16%
9/30 45% 32% 16%
10/14 41% 32% 20%
Looks to me like Christie has lost a significant part of his independant support over the last 45 days, and he needs to do something to turn the slide around.
Rick Perry won re-election as Governor of Texas in 2006 with only 39% of the vote – meaning 61% of the voters wanted the incumbent out, and yet he’s still there today and may be there until 2014. 61% of the voters said nay and allowed their vote to be wasted, as you say, just like all of the Perot voters did in 1992 and 1996. Not only does this happen, it’s common.
3 and 4 way races get weird, and 40% support can be a real solid number for an incumbent in these cases, just like it was for Rick Perry and Bill Clinton.
Christie still has time to fix this if he would just say half as much about taxes as Daggett has.
WWS,
I think what you are seeing is the anti-GOP hesitation as voters wish for something other than the two, tired choices.
But they will go back on election day. I would worry if Corzine was picking them up.
I do honestly hope you are correct. It would be a travesty if Corzine were allowed to sneak back in.
Hopefully it won’t be another Al Franken takeover with or without ACORN’s help.
[…] As I predicted Christie blows out Corzine as Dagget voters decide to not waste their […]