State of the Race: New Jersey Governor (10/26/09)

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A nine point Corzine lead? According to a new Suffolk survey of the Garden state, that is the case. However...

• It was Suffolk's first poll in the state for this race.
  
• The sample size is on the small end; only 400 people.
• There were a lot of undecideds (14%). The last time there was anything in the double digits for undecideds was the September 9 Rasmussen release (10%). Let me add some context: that was "You Lie!" week.
  
• Being that it was Suffolk's first poll in the race, they may have committed a grave error; weighting party identification to party registration. That's a no-no in New Jersey with unaffiliated registration.
  

Is the poll something to be dismissed? No, but it should certainly be treated as an outlier. At one end of the spectrum (an extreme application of the margin of error), if Corzine cedes five points to Christie, the Republican has a one point edge. If you were to do Monte Carlo simulations given the data in this poll, that particular outcome wouldn't come up very many times though.

2009 New Jersey Gubernatorial Race Polling
Poll	Date	Margin of Error	Sample	Corzine	Christie	Daggett	Undecided
Suffolk [pdf]	Oct. 22-25, 2009	+/- 5%	400 likely voters	42	33	7	14

In FHQ's opinion, though, there is one saving grace to this survey: the Daggett result. Sure, perhaps that number should be written off as an outlier given the independent's polling numbers of late. But I think there's something to this and we all should have been tipped off to the possibility a few weeks ago when Fairleigh Dickinson released a poll with a split sample where Daggett's name was used against Corzine and Christie with one subsample and Gary Steele, another candidate for governor, was used in the other subsample. I was too busy that day bemoaning the fact that we couldn't really trust the results of such a small subsample. All the while, though, there was an interesting trend underlying that poll and now this Suffolk one: Daggett has been afforded a privileged position in most of the polls in which he has been included. The independent has been the only non-Corzine/Christie candidate to appear in many of these polls and as such has been adopted by disaffected survey respondents as the anti-Corzine/Christie; a refuge for all wanting to avoid casting a ballot for either of the two major party candidates.

When other third party names are included Daggett's support slips. Sure, he bested Gary Steele when the two subsamples of that Fairleigh Dickinson poll were compared, but the fact that Steele got over 10% was indicative of the fact that there was a fairly sizable portion of the likely electorate that did not particularly care for either Corzine or Christie.

In today's Suffolk poll, all 12 gubernatorial candidates that will appear on the ballot next Tuesday were named. Again, Daggett lost his position as the only Corzine/Christie alternative and was knocked down to earth to some extent because of it. FHQ has already discussed Daggett's ballot problem and this poll may have picked up on what Daggett faces in the ballot box next week: that instead of one alternative to Corzine and Christie, there are several. Daggett's problem now appears to be that survey respondents recognized in him an alternative to Corzine and Christie and didn't necessarily recognize him.

We won't know one way or the other until next week or until we get some more data along these lines (with hopefully a bigger sample).

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But what about the top two contenders vying for a chance to call Drumthwacket their home for the next four years? I don't think that it comes as a surprise to anyone that posting a 33 in this poll negatively affected Chris Christie's average. It did. In fact, it brought the former US attorney's average closer to the 43% mark; again uncharted territory. Meanwhile, Corzine inched ever so slightly further up, but the incumbent Democrat still pretty much sits on the 39% line. So, while Christie maintains a four point lead here, that is shrinking quickly. That's because he is doing far more falling than Corzine is jumping, though.


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State of the Race: New Jersey Governor (10/22/09)

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Thursday was a busy day in the New Jersey governors race. Not only was it the day of the last debate between the three main contenders, but we were also treated to three new polls in the race*. The take-home message from those surveys? Corzine and Christie have deadlocked just below the 40% mark, and at least today, independent Chris Daggett has consolidated much of the rest. Across the three polls the independent averaged just over 17% support and passed 20% in the Rutgers/Eagleton poll.

I scoffed at the notion a week or so ago that Daggett could reprise Jesse Ventura's run to the Minnesota governor's mansion in 1998, but today's polling looks an awful lot like the home stretch survey work in that Minnesota race a decade ago. No, there isn't same day registration/voting in New Jersey as there was in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, but there is a new (absentee) vote by mail process in the Garden state that could potentially help Daggett in that respect. But the independent hasn't been as vocal as Jon Corzine has been on that front. Sure, the Daggett folks have been nice enough to retweet several FHQ microblog postings on Twitter, but Corzine has been using the service to urge folks to utilize the vote by mail process while Daggett has not. [In between mentions of Obama's visit a day ago, Corzine has been informing folks about how many days are left in the vote by mail sequence. 5 more days apparently.]

FHQ mocks the Corzine camp, but Survey USA was nice enough to ask a "have you voted" question in the survey released today. And though only 8% of the respondents had, Corzine had banked slightly more votes than Christie (44-39) with Daggett trailing at 16%. Christie led Corzine by a similar margin among the 92% of the respondents who had not voted (by mail).

2009 New Jersey Gubernatorial Race Polling
Poll	Date	Margin of Error	Sample	Corzine	Christie	Daggett	Undecided
Democracy Corps [pdf]	Oct. 20-21, 2009	+/- 4%	604 likely voters	42	39	13	6
Rutgers/Eagleton [pdf]	Oct. 15-20, 2009	+/- 4.1%	583 likely voters	39	36	20	5
Survey USA	Oct. 19-21, 2009	+/- 3.9%	674 likely voters	39	41	19	1

And what is the state of this race? Though the incumbent has held a fairly stable line over the course of 2009, he has finally met the 39% plateau in FHQ's averages. Meanwhile, Chris Christie's support continues to wane (below 44% for the first time in our measures) while Chris Daggett is very much waxing (over 10% and growing). All the momentum is with the independent. FHQ didn't get to catch the final debate tonight, but did follow along on Twitter. Daggett remained quiet the entire duration almost while Corzine and Christie (or their staffs at least) had an elevated tweet sniping match (compared to the other debate time tweeting). If that is any indication of how the final 12 days of this campaign are going to be waged (and it will get nasty), then Chris Daggett may well pull off his own Jesse Ventura-type win.

That's still a long shot at this point, but not as long as it was a week ago or a week prior to that. There has been a lot of talk about how these races (New Jersey and Virginia) would be spun by the national parties recently and much of that has shifted to talk of a split (Corzine winning in New Jersey and McDonnell in Virginia), but I wonder how the Democratic Party would spin it if they lost to the Republicans in Virginia and an independent in New Jersey. I suspect it would be rather dire after looking like Christie was handing it to them. Again, will that happen? FHQ doesn't dare speculate in such a tight race, but it is an interesting hypothetical to consider with under two weeks to go.

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NOTE: I feel compelled to remind readers that on multiple poll days like today, the "actual" polling levels are averaged across how many ever polls were released. That's why, for instance, you don't see Daggett on the 20% line as the Rutgers poll had him.

*It should also be noted that today was also the day that Corzine passed Christie in the Real Clear Politics and Pollster poll aggregations.


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State of the Race: New Jersey Governor (10/20/09)

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In Virginia, there may be reason to write off the gubernatorial race and move on, but further north in New Jersey, the story is slightly different. The race in the Garden state is shaping up to be a good one over these final two weeks. Republican Chris Christie continues to fall in the polls while independent candidate, Chris Daggett, has snatched up disillusioned supporters of the former US attorney as more and more revelations come to light. All the while incumbent Governor Jon Corzine has been biding his time, not doing much of anything in surveys the whole year. The governor has been stuck in the same 37-38% range he has been in all of 2009, yet, the Democrat is within reach of victory; something that seemed worlds away over the summer. Is it a done deal? No, but things have tightened up substantially in this race.

2009 New Jersey Gubernatorial Race Polling
Poll	Date	Margin of Error	Sample	Corzine	Christie	Daggett	Undecided
Rasmussen	Oct. 19, 2009	+/- 4%	750 likely voters	39	41	11	8
Monmouth/Gannett [pdf]	Oct. 15-18, 2009	+/- 3.1%	1005 likely voters	39	39	14	7

Simply averaging the polls that have been released in the last 24 hours shows Christie with the slightest of edges (40-39), but in FHQ's estimation, the spread is a bit wider but shrinking daily. The narrative in this race -- well across this race and the Virginia race -- from will the Republican(s) win to "is this going to be a split" with one Democrat winning and one Republican winning. And what does that mean for 2010?

What does it mean for 2010? Nothing. It means that two bad candidates, who have run bad campaigns will have potentially lost. The lesson? Don't run a bad campaign. Oh, and try not to be a bad candidate. [Jack brought up a good point in the comments. The two candidates I was apparently (and admittedly) ambiguously referencing above were Chris Christie and Creigh Deeds. Of course, that naturally opens up the discussion as to whether Deeds and/or Christie are bad candidates.]

In New Jersey, though, things continue to be knotted among the two major party candidates with independent Chris Daggett rising coming down the stretch.

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State of the Race: New Jersey Governor (10/16/09)

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It's Debate Day #2 in New Jersey and a new New York Times poll of the gubernatorial race in the Garden state shows once again that the race is dead even between incumbent Governor Jon Corzine and Republican Chris Christie. The Times poll is another instance, however, of Corzine gaining the lead; something we've have seen happen now several times since October began. Not to be overshadowed, independent candidate Chris Daggett has once again pulled support in the mid-teens. And Daggett likely shouldn't be placed on the back burner considering it is a debate day (He did very well in the first debate. In fact, that seems to be what triggered his rise into the mid- to upper teens in October polling.) and that there are whispers floating around about a Michael Bloomberg endorsement in the race. Now, it is anything but certain that Bloomberg would come out in favor of Daggett, but that type of high-profile endorsement (especially from someone talked about last year as a third party presidential candidate), along with the Newark Star-Ledger's endorsement last weekend, certainly wouldn't hurt the efforts of the independent candidate.

2009 New Jersey Gubernatorial Race Polling
Poll	Date	Margin of Error	Sample	Corzine	Christie	Daggett	Undecided
New York Times [pdf]	Oct. 9-14, 2009	+/- 5%	475 likely voters	40	37	14	9

The Times poll, though, isn't the most recent poll out there (the Rasmussen poll released yesterday is the most recently conducted poll in the race) and as such doesn't receive the full weight afforded to the most recent poll. Still, the survey had the effect of dropping Chris Christie's graduated weighted average even further under the 45% mark. Meanwhile, Corzine is flirting with 39% again and Daggett is rapidly approaching double digit support. And as the independent rises, Christie falls, bringing the margin between the two major party candidates under six points for the first time since FHQ began tracking this race. We've said that a lot lately, and if polls continue to show a statistical tie, we'll continue to see and talk about that margin contracting. And with a debate this evening, there is another opportunity on the table for a very tight race to be shaken up.

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State of the Race: New Jersey Governor (10/15/09)

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On the Thursday just more than two weeks out from election day, this is the state of the race in New Jersey's gubernatorial race. With two new polls showing a tight race, there are just a couple of dynamics at work. First, Chris Daggett is pushing well into the double digits in most polls recently and is very close to breaking that barrier in FHQ's averages. Whereas Daggett has the positive momentum, Republican Chris Christie is faced with continually mounting negative momentum. The former US attorney is currently on a trajectory heading closer and closer to incumbent Democrat, Jon Corzine. And sure, Corzine isn't bring any real polling shift to the table (Daggett is), but the governor has been in the position since October began to be the big winner on election day; at least relative to his position in surveys released over the summer.

2009 New Jersey Gubernatorial Race Polling
Poll	Date	Margin of Error	Sample	Corzine	Christie	Daggett	Undecided
Rasmussen	Oct. 14, 2009	+/- 4%	750 likely voters	41	45	9	5
Survey USA	Oct. 12-14, 2009	+/- 4%	611 likely voters	39	40	18	3

Will that actually come to pass? That's an open question. One thing is for sure, though: Daggett's presence has made this a deadlock at the moment and has put the independent and former Republican in a position to be kingmaker. Where his supporters end up on election day will go a long way toward deciding who the eventual winner will be. That's why it is disappointing that the two polls out today (Rasmussen and Survey USA) didn't include any questions to deal with Daggett's supporters' second choice. But I suppose we all got spoiled by those questions in Public Policy Polling and Quinnipiac's polls earlier in the week.

With just 18 days left, the margin between Corzine and Christie has now fallen to nearly six points in FHQ's averages and continues to decrease as Daggett pushes ever upward.

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State of the Race: New Jersey Governor (10/14/09)

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The chatter around the New Jersey gubernatorial race this Tuesday three weeks before the election centered on whether independent Chris Daggett could actually win the election in the Garden state. 77% of the new Quinnipiac survey's respondents thought not, but that didn't keep the good folks at NBC News' First Read from wondering aloud about the possibility. Well, at the very least it didn't prevent First Read from making a flawed connection between Jesse Ventura's win in the Minnesota governors contest in 1998 and Chris Daggett in 2009.

Yes, environmentally, Minnesota had an electorate that was seemingly against both major parties down the stretch in that race whose candidates were deadlocked in the polls. However, New Jersey and Chris Daggett are missing two very important ingredients from the Ventura formula: money and election day registration. [Oh, and if the Minnesota ballot in 1998 was anything like this -- which is a heck of a lot better than this -- Daggett will have had something Ventura did not: a ballot problem.] Does any of this mean Daggett cannot win? Well, there is an awful lot of mounting evidence, but I suppose the idea can't be completely dismissed.

2009 New Jersey Gubernatorial Race Polling
Poll	Date	Margin of Error	Sample	Corzine	Christie	Daggett	Undecided
Quinnipiac	Oct. 7-12, 2009	+/- 2.8%	1264 likely voters	40	41	14	5

Meanwhile, the two major party candidates remained in a statistical tie in yet another poll. Jon Corzine continues to hover just under the 39% mark in FHQ's averages, but Chris Christie dropped yet again; this time to just less than 45% (His lowest mark since FHQ began watching the race in June.). With each passing day, the Republican is inching ever closer to Corzine, who seems destined to come in somewhere very close to the 40% mark from here on out (Perhaps not in the voting itself, but the polling sure seems that way.).

And where does that leave this race? Well, it is a tie with a very interesting third party twist. Like the Public Policy Polling survey yesterday, the Quinnipiac poll finds Daggett's support to be on the weak side of the ledger (59% of the Daggett supporters said they still may change their minds.), and Christie is the leading second choice for those respondents. To that latter point, however, Christie leads by only 7 points (40-33), which is about half of what PPP showed yesterday. If the polls continue to show a tie between Corzine and Christie for the next three weeks, the second choice question will absolutely be the number to watch as this race runs its course.

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State of the Race: New Jersey Governor (10/13/09)

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Public Policy Polling released a new poll from New Jersey this morning and the state of the race has moved very little. In fact, because the new poll looked so similar to the last most recent poll (from Democracy Corp), nothing changed much at all with the exception of both major party candidates dropping a tenth of a percentage point. Christie's shift is a continuance of his slide in surveys of late whereas Corzine's move was more a function of his most recent poll rating (41% in the Democracy Corp poll) being slightly higher than the 39% support the incumbent Democrat received in the PPP poll.

2009 New Jersey Gubernatorial Race Polling
Poll	Date	Margin of Error	Sample	Corzine	Christie	Daggett	Undecided
Public Policy Polling [pdf]	Oct. 9-12, 2009	+/- 4.1%	571 likely voters	39	40	13	8

The real news continues to be Chris Daggett's rise in the last few weeks. His 13% showing in the PPP poll pushed the independent closer to the 10% mark in FHQ's averages of the race's competitors. But it isn't all good news for Daggett (and Corzine by association). As was brought up again today by Marc Ambinder at the Atlantic, Daggett faces the very real possibility that voters will have issues locating him on the ballot. The major party candidates get the first two rows in the gubernatorial ballot with the first slot being determined by a coin flip between the Democrats and Republicans. Everyone else, though, is crammed into a third row (see FHQ's discussion of this from last week). What will happen then? PPP found that only 44% of Daggett's supporters in this poll were committed to the independent and that Christie led by a 48-34 margin over Corzine as a second choice. If you aren't really committed to the third party guy, and you can't find him on the ballot, then what is the likelihood that you throw in the towel and mark the name of your second choice -- the guy who's not the unpopular incumbent.

Now, is that likely to happen? Possibly in a lower information, off-year election like this where the race is close. Usually the impact of something like this would be felt at the margins and wouldn't affect the outcome. But we're talking about a statistical tie in this race in the most recent polls. Yes, FHQ's averages are still a bit skeptical (owing to the fact that we have turned the other way on several Neighborhood Research polls and a handful of internet-based polls that have shown a close race as well) and lag behind. However, the margin between Christie and Corzine is definitely creeping closer.

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I don't know that there is much to say here. The race for governor in New Jersey is very simply getting tighter. Jon Corzine found himself again on top of the race in a poll for the second time this week, doubling his total of polls led from (way) earlier in the year. Now, that isn't to say that Chris Christie has lost the advantage -- he hasn't here at FHQ or elsewhere -- but the momentum is squarely against the Republican at the moment. And the sudden jump of independent Chris Daggett in the polls (especially this week into the mid-teens) seems to be drawing directly from the former US attorney. All three candidates are breaking new ground. Daggett is threatening to break the 10% mark, Corzine is inching toward 40% and Christie is now about to fall under 45% for the first time since FHQ began tabulating the averages of this race in mid-June.

2009 New Jersey Gubernatorial Race Polling
Poll	Date	Margin of Error	Sample	Corzine	Christie	Daggett	Undecided
Democracy Corps [pdf]	Oct. 6-7, 2009	+/- 4%	614 likely voters	41	38	14	7
Survey USA	Oct. 5-7, 2009	+/- 4%	639 likely voters	40	43	14	2

What brought us to this point today? Well, two new polls -- from Survey USA and Democracy Corps -- each showed one of the candidates up by three points. In other words, today's polls were statistical ties. Averaging across the two (without weighting), Christie and Corzine were knotted at 40.5% with Daggett laying claim to the support of 14% of the survey respondents.

With a tie basically prevailing here, every big event (and even some seemingly small ones unforeseen on the horizon) is magnified. As much as the debates may seem like non-starters nationally, they may matter from the perspective that they offer a chance for either major party campaign to shift the narrative coming out of the event and moving forward.

Again, Christie is ahead, but with just under four weeks left to go this one continues to get more and more interesting.

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It is always one thing to say you're gaining on your competition, but to actually get in a position to surpass him or her is another thing entirely. And while Jon Corzine hasn't exactly been gaining on Chris Christie in the polls so much as Christie has been sliding, the incumbent is now within striking distance. Of all the poll releases since (the completely arbitrary date of) September 21, all six have shown a race within four points. [And depending on the sample sizes, all are within the margin of error.] And in the Fairleigh Dickinson poll out today, Jon Corzine has his first poll lead since January. One could say it has been a roller coaster ride. It has; just not for Corzine, who in the two polls released today reached the high water mark or his polling support this entire year. Despite that, Corzine has been stuck for the better part of the year in the 37-38% range in most polls while Chris Christie has been the one to see a dramatic rise into the 50% range and a subsequent fall since.

2009 New Jersey Gubernatorial Race Polling
Poll	Date	Margin of Error	Sample	Corzine	Christie	Daggett	Undecided
Rasmussen	Oct. 5, 2009	+/- 4%	750 likely voters	44	47	6	3
Fairleigh Dickinson [pdf]	Sept. 28-Oct. 5, 2009	+/- 4%	667 likely voters	44	43	4	5

Before we look at the broader picture, we need to make a side note about the Fairleigh Dickinson poll and Chris Daggett*. The independent candidate received 4% in the poll, but in a split sample question that named either Daggett or another independent candidate, Gary Steele, directly (as opposed to having either candidate volunteered by the respondent in the full sample question), Daggett garnered 17% of the vote. Steele pulled in 12%. In other words, there appears to be some apprehension among likely voters concerning the two major party candidates. The reason that FHQ used the volunteered Daggett results over the split sample results was that the split sample size was so small for a New Jersey-wide poll. In the interest of transparency, though, the results for that question (Corzine 38, Christie 37, Daggett 17) yielded averages of Corzine 38.7%, Christie 45.8% and Daggett 7.9%. The gap, then, between the Corzine and Christie would be the same, albeit with both candidates a sliver under where they are in the graphic above.

So where does that leave this race? Things certainly are tightening, but FHQ's graduated weighted average continues to show a pretty good lead for Christie. It is still above seven points, but only barely so. The remarkable thing is that now it is Christie who is basically in the same position he was in back in June following his primary victory. Meanwhile, Corzine, who was stuck on the line between 37 and 38 all summer is the candidate who is gaining (both recently and relative to his comparable numbers in June). Christie may be ahead, then, but that margin continues to shrink, or will if subsequent polls continue to show these dead heats.

...and there is no indication yet that we won't continue to see that. That makes for an interesting last month to this particular race.

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*Also note that Daggett has now been added to both the header graphic and the trendline graphic immediately above.


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Here's what things would have looked like in New Jersey had the Rasmussen poll been released tomorrow.

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Word of this poll came out prior to the first debate of the New Jersey governors race, but still, following that debate where independent candidate, Chris Daggett stole the show, this can't be good news for the Christie campaign. The Republican is increasingly coming back to the pack and a visible alternative can only serve to potentially split the anti-incumbent/anti-Corzine vote. Is Corzine in the clear, though? No, but the governor did manage to break the 40% barrier which has to be seen as partially positive. After all, if Daggett ends up with around 10% of the vote on November 3, then the race is to 45. 42% is better, but Christie is still closer at 46%

2009 New Jersey Gubernatorial Race Polling
Poll	Date	Margin of Error	Sample	Corzine	Christie	Daggett	Undecided
Daily Kos/Research 2000	Sept. 28-30, 2009	+/- 4%	600 likely voters	42	46	7	5

But Corzine isn't really at 42%. He is in this poll, but he has certainly been underperforming that mark in all but a few polls throughout all of 2009 and hasn't really been to that height recently. FHQ still has the incumbent Democrat in the same 38% range, but he is inching upward while Christie is sliding. If the race continues on this current trajectory, it is going to, as seems to be the case given recent polling in the Virginia race, be about turnout. And given the Democratic bent of the Garden state that's good news at Drumthwacket.

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State of the Race: New Jersey Governor (10/1/09)

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The other shoe dropped today on the day of the first gubernatorial debate in New Jersey. Yesterday it was Quinnipiac that showed a closer race after having shown Chris Christie comfortably ahead for much of the year. Today it is Monmouth/Gannett, that's following suit. Of course, Daily Kos/Research 2000 are going to show an equally tight race in the morning.

2009 New Jersey Gubernatorial Race Polling
Poll	Date	Margin of Error	Sample	Corzine	Christie	Daggett	Undecided
Monmouth/Gannett [pdf]	Sept. 24-29, 2009	+/- 4.3%	527 likely voters	40	43	8	8

Again, though, this is evidence not of a Corzine comeback (He has inched into the 39-40% range this week.), but of Republican Chris Christie's decline from a summer peak in the lower 50s. Independent candidate Chris Daggett initially seemed to be taking away support from Corzine, but as Christie drops and Daggett remains around the same level in the polls, on its face at least, it appears as if he may be drawing more support from the Republican.

We'll have to see what the internals on the Kos poll look like in the morning.

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New Jersey's race for governor seems to be tightening some. FHQ has long been moderately skeptical of Chris Christie's return from a midsummer's polling peak. But now that one of the main hold outs -- one of the polls that has consistently shown the Republican up by near double digits (or more) leads -- has indicated that the race is closer, strange things may indeed be afoot at the Circle K. Given that Governor Corzine is still mired in the high 30s, this seems to be pointing toward independent candidate Chris Daggett having a significant impact on the outcome of this race.

2009 New Jersey Gubernatorial Race Polling
Poll	Date	Margin of Error	Sample	Corzine	Christie	Daggett	Undecided
Quinnipiac	Sept. 23-28, 2009	+/- 2.8%	1188 likely voters	39	43	12	6

But let's not read too much into one poll. The truth of the matter is that this poll has very little effect on the FHQ averages for the race. In fact, the numbers have basically flatlined for the two major party candidates since the previous poll -- last week's Democracy Corp poll. Where does that leave us with less than five weeks left in the race? Well, Christie is slowly dropping but Corzine isn't going much of anywhere. The governor continues to occupy a spot in the 37-39% range and doesn't appear to be going anywhere fast. The question for him now is, "Can Daggett pull enough away from Christie to keep the incumbent in office?" With a little over a month left, we're about to find out.

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We're close to entering the final month of Campaign '09 and the polling in New Jersey and Virginia is starting to pick up as a result. There were a couple of new polls out in New Jersey and depending on your perspective both are problematic. FHQ won't pile on Strategic Vision any more than has already been the case (see here and here*) except to accuse Strategic Vision of stealing our numbers -- jokingly of course.

...I think.

The first thing we thought here at FHQ upon seeing those numbers was, "Hey, those are the same as our averages in the race right now. What a coincidence."

Later it became, "Was that a coincidence?" Of course it is, but my real point here is that the inclusion of that data has absolutely no impact on the averages. They basically just serve to reinforce the preexisting state of the race. We'll leave the Strategic Vision poll in the averages until something is definitively proven one way or the other. Innocent until proven guilty, right?

2009 New Jersey Gubernatorial Race Polling
Poll	Date	Margin of Error	Sample	Corzine	Christie	Daggett	Undecided
Strategic Vision	Sept. 18-21, 2009	+/- 3%	800 likely voters	38	46	8	8
Democracy Corp [pdf]	Sept. 22-23, 2009	+/- 4%	601 likely voters	39	40	11	9

The other poll from the Garden state came from Democracy Corp. Now, there isn't anything wrong with the GQR poll other than the fact that the firm leans Democratic. The firm has consistently shown a closer race than most other polling outfits, and that doesn't change here. What this and Democracy Corp's other polls seem to imply, given that Corzine continually hover at or below the 40% mark across these and most other polls, is that the support for independent candidate Chris Daggett is coming at the expense of Chris Christie and not Jon Corzine (as has seemed the case in other polling). Still, the poll certainly seems to accurately show the position Corzine is in, but is underestimating Christie's support relative to other recent polls.

How does that affect the Republican candidate's fortunes in FHQ's assessment of the race? Well, it certainly hasn't trailed off like what Pollster is showing (Christie = 43.7%)**, but it has dropped. Throughout our averaging of the polls in this race, Christie has yet to drop below the 46% mark, but is on the cusp of doing so now. [In fact, the Republican technically has dropped below that point because the average rounded up from 45.99.] However, Corzine has been unable to counteract that decrease from his opponent with an increase of his own. And that continues to be the story in this race. Now, Christie's decline may ultimately wind up meaning that undecideds and some Daggett supporters break toward Corzine at the last minute, but we're a long way off from seeing that. For now, Corzine is still trying to figure out how to break 40%.

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*I had the same question as in one of FiveThirtyEight's early comments to that post. It is fine to compare Strategic Vision to the average across all polling firms but how to other firms stack up under similar isolated scrutiny.
**The Christie decline at Pollster is largely attributable to both the Democracy Corp polls and their inclusion of the Neighborhood Research polls as well. And FHQ is excluding the polls from the latter.


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State of the Race: New Jersey Governor (9/22/09)

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Six weeks to go until election day and in New Jersey nothing is new. Chris Christie continues to lead incumbent governor, Jon Corzine. The only thing remotely new out of the just released Rasmussen poll of the Garden state gubernatorial race is that the undecided mark has dropped off since the last survey the firm conducted in the state earlier in the month. The good news for Chris Christie is that Corzine does not seem to be taking any disproportionate number of these late deciders (at least not enough to make a noticeable difference).

2009 New Jersey Gubernatorial Race Polling
Poll	Date	Margin of Error	Sample	Corzine	Christie	Daggett	Undecided
Rasmussen	Sept. 21, 2009	+/- 4.5%	500 likely voters	41	48	6	5

And where does that leave this race? With only a little over a week before October dawns, this race is startlingly stationary from the Corzine campaign's perspective. It has to be. If you compare the first FHQ graduated weighted average of this race from all the way back on June 11 to this one you will find that Christie has hardly budged, edging up only three-tenths of a percentage point. Corzine meanwhile has only been able to cut into an initial (approximately) ten point lead by a little under a point. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that that's probably not how they envisioned the summer going.

A while back I joked that Creigh Deeds needed to find his Bush/US attorney rating story and run with it. The Virginia Democrat has certainly found something in Bob McDonnell's thesis to help close the gap. But now the tables are turned and the Corzine folks are hoping for some new to help turn the tide in the New Jersey race. [Of course Deeds hopes the thesis has a longer shelf life than the Bush link did for Corzine.] The main difference between the two races is that Corzine is running on his record from the last four years and New Jersey voters, at least the ones seemingly likely to head to the polls in November, don't like it. The upcoming debates may have some impact, but will anyone be paying attention? That's a problem for the incumbent.

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About that New Jersey Governors Poll, Part III

About that New Jersey Governors Poll, Part III

FHQ promised to revisit the recently released Neighborhood Research poll and its August predecessor and gauge the impact those polls would have on the race if they were included in our graduated weighted averages of the polling in the New Jersey governors race. I was going to go the whole nine yards and include a mock-up of the usual graphic I've been putting up with our updates of the New Jersey and Virginia contests. In the interest of clarity, though, I'll hold it to a simple numbers-to-numbers comparison.

I don't think anyone will be surprised by the fact that these polls hurt Chris Christie more than Jon Corzine. That the Republican has pulled in only 37% support among the likely voters in both polls is indicative of how accurate they are. Even when those polls are included amongst the others, they are barely within two standard deviations of the unweighted polling average. Corzine's distribution is much more tightly clustered. Every single one of the 39 polls conducted in this particular match up since the first of the year is within plus or minus one standard deviation of the unweighted average.

I don't want to bog you down with statistical gobbledygook, so this is just a long way of saying that both these Neighborhood Research polls are outliers and both polls put more of a drag on Christie's numbers than on Corzine's.

How much? Well, to be fair, the polls aren't helping Corzine either (other than to decrease Christie's average support). But the incumbent only loses four tenths of a percentage point (from 37.8% to 37.4%) when these polls are added to our averages. However, the comparable figure for Christie is a loss of one point (46.4% to 45.4%). In other words, the polls have twice the negative impact on Christie as on Corzine (at least in terms of FHQ's averaging of the race).

Is that a big deal? Honestly, it isn't, but in an environment where a decreasing margin is expected to some extent (Corzine catching up due to registered Democrats outweighing Republicans in the Garden state), these polls have the effect of inaccurately deflating that gap.

And that, in a nutshell, is why FHQ is looking the other way when these polls are released.

...well, sort of...


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About that New Jersey Governors Poll, Part II

I think Saturday was a good day for Neighborhood Research to release the results of their most recent poll of the New Jersey gubernatorial race. If people weren't already looking to the Value Voters Summit for a 2012 straw poll, they were planning on watching some football. [Yes, FHQ is aware that there are some people out there who did neither, but we're willing to bet that if you are reading this, you were looking forward to at least one of those.] In any event, it was a good day to sweep last month's snafu under the rug and move on.

New Jersey Gubernatorial Polls
Poll	Date	Corzine	Christie	Daggett	Undecided
Neighborhood Research	Aug. 12-21, 2009	35	37	6	22
Neighborhood Research[pdf]	Sept. 14-17, 2009	33	37	8	22

Yeah, remember their first poll. [Right, the one that led to this post to which this current one is a sequel.] It was the one FHQ was leery of because it showed Corzine ahead (???) and because the pollster was a former campaign manager of a Chris Christie primary opponent, Steve Lonegan. Well, according to Neighborhood Research's release today, that lead wasn't Corzine's; it was Christie's.

...but nevermind that we (Neighborhood Research) didn't bother telling anyone that reported this initial, how shall I put this so that it maintains a modicum of diplomacy, transcription error. Just to prove that I'm not imagining this, let's look at some (still active) screenshots from Pollster and PolitickerNJ from the around the time of the August Neighborhood Research poll.

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That's the view from Pollster, but how about PolitickerNJ?

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But if you follow the the link at this post's outset, you'll see that Christie is now the one who held that 37-35 edge during the mid-August period in which the poll was in the field. At the time, I talked about the two issues with the poll* (the Corzine lead and the potential conflict of interest) being two strikes against Neighborhood Research. Well, I think they may have just struck out.

But just so FHQ doesn't seem too jerky, tune back in tomorrow morning and we'll have a glance at how these polls (to this point excluded) would affect our graduated weighted averages of the race.

*And that doesn't even bring into the picture the small sample sizes and this quirky likely voters/definite voters distinction.


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