State of the Race: New Jersey Governor (9/15/09)

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What was it Dectective Frank Drebin said in the first Naked Gun movie as he was attempting to disperse the crowd gawking at an exploding fireworks factory?

Nothing to see here, folks.

Now, today's Public Policy Polling survey of the New Jersey gubernatorial race was certainly interesting in some aspects (It wasn't as status quo-maintaining as the Monmouth poll a day ago.), but it was not an earth-shattering revelation of Corzine's late season comeback either. Honestly, the most interesting part of both this race and the race in Virginia is that Democrats are either seemingly tired after 2008 or complacent. What else explains how a state that President Obama won by 15 points last November suddenly has a 2009 (likely) electorate that favors Obama by only two points? Democrats just aren't opting into either of these races in the numbers that they did only a year ago. And though Chris Christie is the one gaining from that situation, Jon Corzine has been continually stuck in the upper 30s (in FHQ's averaging) throughout, stymied of late by the slow growth behind independent candidate, Chris Daggett's run.

2009 New Jersey Gubernatorial Race Polling
Poll	Date	Margin of Error	Sample	Corzine	Christie	Daggett	Undecided
Public Policy Polling [pdf]	Sept. 11-14, 2009	+/- 4.5%	500 likely voters	35	44	13	7

What's more is that PPP compared 2005 support for Corzine against his current position and found that he has only managed to win over 62% of those that supported him just four short years ago. You won't win many (re)elections that way. Christie is even pulling in one in five of the those 2005 Corzine supporters.

Despite those rather dismal numbers underlying the toplines, the race is still within ten points (barely) and largely unchanged by the addition of this poll. But if you're after a competitive election (And what self-respecting political junkie isn't?), then Corzine will need to have moved full time into the low to mid-40s by the end of the month and be trending even further upward by then.

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State of the Race: New Jersey Governor (9/14/09)

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