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: Virginia Governor (10/20/09)

New (Well, Old) Rasmussen 2012 GOP Primary Poll: Huckabee's Tops

The Week Ahead

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

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The debates are over and all that's left are the final two weeks of the campaign in the Virginia gubernatorial race. And despite the fact that the polling in the race released in the last 24 hours has been all over the place, little has changed. Republican Bob McDonnell is still very much in control. It isn't a commanding lead -- well, unless you count the Survey USA poll -- but it is a comfortable, nearly double digit lead currently. Just like the debate tonight, then, there really is no shake up represented in these polls. Actually what we have are three polls: one high, one low and one in the middle. For my money, I'll take that Clarus Research Group poll out of the three. It is nestled in between two outliers and ends up being quite close to where FHQ has the race at the moment and where most of the recent polling has found the race.

2009 Virginia Gubernatorial Race Polling
Poll	Date	Margin of Error	Sample	Deeds	McDonnell	Undecided
Survey USA	Oct. 17-19, 2009	+/- 4%	595 likely voters	40	59	1
Clarus Research Group [pdf]	Oct. 18-19, 2009	+/- 4%	575 likely voters	41	49	10
Christopher Newport University	Oct. 8-13, 2009	+/- 4%	506 likely voters	30.9	44.7	21.9

Is it all over in the Old Dominion? Well, Deeds missed his best opportunity to shift the narrative of the race at this evening's debate and I'm hard-pressed to conjure up a scenario where the state senator pulls an election win out. We reached this point in the presidential campaign a year ago too. The talk shifted from who will win to how much Obama would win by. FHQ is of the opinion that we have reached that point in this race. And who are we to go against the trend in Virginia anyway? A Democrat is in the White House, so that means a Republican will win the race for governor in Virginia.

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FHQ would be remiss if it didn't at least mention the Christopher Newport University poll. That 21.9% undecideds is an astronomical figure for this late in the race. However, it is their first poll in the race and they did call the Obama-McCain margin correctly in their poll a few weeks prior to the election a year ago (election results vs. poll results). Still, that's a lot of people who are undecided in a race that has stabilized recently. It make for a nice peak on the purple line on the figure above though.


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The Week Ahead

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

New (Well, Old) Rasmussen 2012 GOP Primary Poll: Huckabee's Tops

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Huckabee: 29%
Romney: 24%
Palin: 18%
Gingrich: 14%
Pawlenty: 4%

Polling Firm: Rasmussen
Margin of Error: +/- 4%
Sample: 750 likely GOP primary voters (nationally)
Conducted: October 15, 2009


Last Friday, Rasmussen released a look at the (very early -- Had to say it.) 2012 Republican presidential nomination race. This is the first such poll in nearly two months -- the head-to-head trial heat polls against President Obama are done more frequently -- but it seems to be showing the same picture with, perhaps, a slightly different spin. First of all, Mike Huckabee has traded positions with Mitt Romney, taking over the top spot for the first time since a July ABC/Washington Post poll had the former Arkansas governor in the lead. Still, we're operating with the same working group of contenders intact.

Or are we?

Though we've had but two polls (this Rasmussen one included) since August showing a widening gap between Sarah Palin and the top threesome, I'm on the verge of saying that there are two lead groups: the Huckabee/Romney group and the Palin/Gingrich group. The former has been consistently in the 20-30% range throughout the polling conducted since the presidential election a year ago. The latter group has been fairly consistently within the low 20% range and lower. Is the former Alaska governor settling into a position in the upper teens now? Only additional polling will tell us that for sure, but I think it is on the table now for consideration. Last week's Gallup numbers on Palin seem to echo this. Granted, that is a national poll of her approval and not a poll of likely Republican primary voters for 2012. Still, Palin has been in a better position overall prior to now.

Is it all bad for the former vice presidential nominee? Well, yeah it is, because she is also getting beaten handily in head-to-head Republican primary match ups against both Huckabee and Romney as well. Here are those numbers (also from the same Rasmussen poll) as well as the Romney/Huckabee trial heat:

Romney: 52%
Palin: 37%
undecided: 11%

Huckabee: 55%
Palin: 35%
undecided: 10%

Romney: 39%
Huckabee: 44%
undecided: 17%

Polling Firm: Rasmussen
Margin of Error: +/- 4%
Sample: 750 likely Republican primary voters
Conducted: October 15, 2009

A couple of notes about these, to me, somewhat strange polls. [The numbers are fine. They make sense, but I'm still trying to figure out why these particular match ups were polled. It just seems strange. But I think FHQ was the one that said it liked the information. Can't have it both ways, FHQ.] First, when Palin isn't among the list of candidates the undecided group shoots up to the high teens from the low double digits. Is that indicative of folks voting for someone other than Palin or just a signal that people are moving toward her? Sure, the temptation is to say that it is probably some of both, but look closely. Romney and Huckabee's numbers stay steady against Palin, but drop in her absence. Is that overwhelming proof that respondents are taking an "anybody but Palin" approach? No, it isn't, but there is some of that in there.

The second caveat contradicts that point, though. If we look at the figure Rasmussen loves to track on a daily basis in his Twitter account and apply it to Palin (and the other Republicans) instead of President Obama, we see that more people strongly favorable of Palin compared to those very unfavorable of her. Now, Obama has been stuck at around -10 in this (approval) rating for a long while, but Palin and the Republicans are a different story (and should be among an entirely Republican sample). The bottom line, though is that Palin is +31 by that metric (strongly favorable - strongly unfavorable). That bests Romney (+30) but pales in comparison to Huckabee's +43 rating. Of course, that there is such a difference between Romney and Huckabee on this measure (while Romney and Palin are close) yet Romney and Huckabee have similar positions relative to Palin likely says that there is some choose "anybody but Palin" activity in this sample.

Now let's see if Rasmussen releases any trial heats against Obama in the next couple of days. Public Policy Polling is set to release their numbers on that front on Thursday.


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The Week Ahead

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

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

The Week Ahead

First, FHQ should apologize. I got called out of town on Friday and that kept me away from the computer for most of the weekend. What that means is that we'll likely have a busy start to the week. What's on tap?

• A belated look at some of Rick Davis' comments on the McCain campaign's strategy down the stretch in 2008.
• A look (with graphics) at the Rasmussen 2012 GOP primary poll released on Friday and the odd(-ish) head-to-heads among the various prospective Republican candidates for president.
• I think the GOP primary poll was a signal that Rasmussen will also put out a series of 2012 presidential general election trial heats.
• And that comes at a good time because Public Policy Polling will likely have their monthly trial heats out some time this week. Remember, they have substituted Tim Pawlenty in for Jeb Bush this month (who replace Newt Gingrich a month ago).
• And finally, we'll continue to see a likely flood of polling from New Jersey and Virginia this week. With only two weeks to go, polling activity is going to be heavy. PPP will have their Virginia results out tomorrow some time.
  

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

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Rick Davis on New Media

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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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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Rick Davis on Palin: VP Selection is easy when you're up 15 points, but is tough when you're down 15

Rick Davis at Wake Forest: A Series of Postscripts

Rick Davis on New Media

This is part two in a series of posts on Rick Davis' recent visit with political science students and faculty at Wake Forest. See part one for some of Davis' thoughts on Sarah Palin's selection as McCain's vice presidential running mate.

The most underrated portion of the hour with Rick Davis this past Tuesday was his discussion of running a presidential campaign in the era of the 25 hour news cycle. [FHQ likes to add an extra hour for emphasis.] But to the McCain campaign (and I'd assume any other campaign for president or House or Senate or governor), this is something that has changed dramatically in the internet age. What he described taking place made me think of the masters of rapid response, the Clinton campaign in 1992, or more to the point, how they would have fared sixteen years in the future with Gennifer Flowers' and Paula Jones' accusations. It would have been completely different than simply going on 60 Minutes prior to New Hampshire.

Needless to say, Davis seemed to conjure up a vision from the campaign's perspective of both apprehension of and flat out animosity toward new media. Honestly, you can't blame him; it made his job more difficult. But Davis did seem to echo some of the same sentiment that came out of the White House earlier this week concerning liberal bloggers*. Davis called them, "guys who don't comb their hair and work from mom's basement." [Of course, I took exception to this as a blogger. I'll let you decide my ideological persuasion. I've certainly had the liberal label thrown at me. When I asked him my strategy question later on, I introduced myself as "Josh Putnam, Visiting Assistant professor ... and blogger. And (touching my head) I'd like to think I combed my hair this morning. I have a class to teach after this." He laughed it off and said I looked good. I'm so insecure.]

But Davis went on to describe the dilemma the McCain campaign was in and what most presidential campaigns must face these days. Bloggers and their "breaking stories at 2 in the morning" were only part of it. They had a warroom of sorts set up to monitor blogs and an in-house studio to respond nationally or to a targeted media market affiliate at the drop of a hat. The big deal, though was the media pool that was with them on the Straight Talk Express or on the campaign's plane en route to the next campaign stop. Davis drew a line between the Express of 2000 and the 2008 Express; that in 2000, the insurgent campaign and the bus were a novelty worth following. As such, they career journalists following them. But in 2008, in the new era and after old guard journos of 2000 had either retired or been laid off, they were being followed by a group of folks whose "average age must have been 25" and who were "carrying these little handheld cameras."

It was this latter point that Davis stressed the most. The campaign was just not ready for the changes since 2000. Senator McCain was fine, but without make up "looked like Caspar the Friendly Ghost" or "looked a hundred years old" on the tape shot on those cameras. What compounded matters was that the Obama campaign or their surrogates would quickly "release statements after one of these videos appeared on the news/web saying 'McCain looked frail today.'"

"That really bothered me," Davis said. [All the while I had two thoughts going through my head. One serious: The 2008 campaign really had a delicate nature to it in the face of two historic candidacies. Much was made of Barack Obama's race and even though it received attention, McCain's age often took a back seat. But there really was this weird racism/ageism undertone to the race. And one not so serious: Bobby Bowden knows how McCain felt.]

So the McCain camp, Davis in particular, had a dilemma: "Ban them [the reporters]" or "spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to rip seats out of the plane and put in a small studio" so McCain could do those interviews. They chose the latter.

What all this really drove home was the idea of the standard presidential candidates are held to. It isn't falling down stairs or eating unshucked tamales anymore. No, those are things you can kinda sorta help. But age or race or weight or baldness aren't things you can help (or help easily sometimes -- Sorry Chris Christie. I tried.). It's a different era and that came through in what Rick Davis spoke about.

*"And for a sign of how seriously the White House does or doesn't take this opposition, one adviser told me today those [internet left fringe] bloggers need to take off their pajamas, get dressed and realize that governing a closely divided country is complicated and difficult." (from John Harwood at NBC, via Ta-Nehisi Coates)


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Rick Davis on Palin: VP Selection is easy when you're up 15 points, but is tough when you're down 15

This is part one in a series of posts on Rick Davis' recent visit with political science students and faculty at Wake Forest.

On Palin...
Davis mentioned that the campaign was keeping tabs on what the Democrats were doing over the summer; not necessarily in terms of their vice presidential selection, but poll position among various demographic groups. Beyond that, the McCain camp came up with a list of about 50 names that was ultimately whittled down to about 20. That was the serious list. At that point, Davis sat down with McCain with the names and the numbers and discussed the selection. Davis prefaced this by saying (I'm paraphrasing), "Because, you know, the candidate has some input, too."

To that point, the campaign seemed to be targeting possibilities that would help them sway Hillary Democrats (or are those Reagan Democrats?), but people like Joe Lieberman and Michael Bloomberg were not moving the needle in a positive direction for the Arizona senator among those folks in particular or overall. It was at this time that McCain proposed the idea of looking at women, but as Davis suggested, the reality was (and is) that there just aren't that many female Republican options. Admittedly, I was hoping during this point in the talk that Davis would name names of other Republican women considered, but all he said, in addition to the slim pickings comment, was that women in politics and business were considered. On the business front, I can't help but assume that both Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman had their names come up, but don't know how seriously either was considered.

Part of the problem for Republicans in 2008 was that it was just plain hard to run with an R next to your name unless you were representing a ruby red state or congressional district. What was vexing the McCain campaign, though, and what led them to consider a woman for the number two position on the ticket, was that they were facing a tremendous gender gap among their core of white voters. In the end the only one who significantly closed that gap (and was someone who McCain could live with) was Sarah Palin. Among those white voters, she took an approximately 40 point gender gap and shrunk it to single digits. [Something that I really wanted to ask in follow up to this point is what Davis thought about the fact that the 2012 polling done thus far has consistently shown Palin trailing her male Republican counterparts relative to Obama in terms of the gender gap. Alas, I didn't have the opportunity.]

I wouldn't say they thought her selection was a no-brainer, but their were advantages to her having been picked. Even Steve Schmidt is drawing a distinction between 2008 Palin and potential 2012 Palin; calling her potential nomination in 2012 "catastrophic," but adding just today that her selection was defensible. ["I believe to this day that had she not been picked as a vice presidential candidate, we would have never been ahead, not for one second, not for one minute, not for one hour, not for one day."] The lead Schmidt references there was something Davis touched on as well: That in national polls, McCain was ahead after the Palin pick. Now granted, that was during that unprecedented string of events from the close of the Democratic convention on Thursday night, to the introduction of Palin on Friday to the Republican convention the following week. The lead may have been due to a Palin effect, but there very likely was at least something of an interactive effect between that and the convention bounce.

The McCain folks apparently are of a mind that it was Palin and not the convention though.


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Rick Davis at Wake Forest: A Series of Postscripts

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

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Rick Davis at Wake Forest: A Series of Postscripts

On Sunday, I solicited FHQ readers for questions to pose to Rick Davis, who was visiting campus here at Wake Forest on Tuesday. The former 2000 and 2008 McCain campaign manager had an hour to speak and field questions from political science students and faculty here and offered a unique glimpse inside the McCain operation.

I'll skip over his prefatory comments, which focused on his past in the College Republicans in Alabama in the late 1970s. Those points were really only interesting for the description of his agree-to-disagree relationship with Karl Rove that found its origin not in the McCain-Bush divisions of the 2000 Republican nomination race (and infamously South Carolina), but in their College Republican days (Rove in Washington, Davis in Alabama).

Again, that was informative, but the meat of the event was the Q&A session. And believe it or not the "Palin question" did not lead. I was shocked; Davis was too, and said so when he got the second question, which happened to be about the former Alaska governor. One thing that was clear was that Davis has certainly spent some time around politicians. His answers were long, debate-style walls of talking points. I don't particularly have a problem with that (As I said, it was an informative hour.), but it had the effect of limiting the number of questions that were asked in a short period of time. In the end, beggars can't be choosers, though.

What did Davis have to say? I'll have a series of posts up throughout the day dealing with several different topics with which Davis dealt. Up first? Sarah Palin.


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

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)

If you hold an Iowa Caucus, will the 2012 candidates come?