State of the Race: New Jersey Governor (10/27/09)

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While Virginia is quickly being supplanted by the three way race in New York's 23rd congressional district in terms of competitive interest, New Jersey is not; buoyed by a three way race of its own. Of course, things were seemingly back to normal on Tuesday, a day after a Suffolk poll found incumbent, Jon Corzine ahead by an unseen-to-that-point 9 point advantage over Republican Chris Christie. Today, though, it was back to the within the margin of error polling leads that have marked this race in the Garden state for the last few weeks. Both Rasmussen and Public Policy Polling found as much in the state, though PPP's margin between the two major party candidates was technically outside of the margin of error.

2009 New Jersey Gubernatorial Race Polling
Poll	Date	Margin of Error	Sample	Corzine	Christie	Daggett	Undecided
Rasmussen	Oct. 26, 2009	+/- 3%	1000 likely voters	43	46	7	4
Public Policy Polling [pdf]	Oct. 23-26, 2009	+/- 3.9%	630 likely voters	38	42	13	6

Still, both polls found Christie to be slightly ahead. The PPP survey is much more in line with where you no doubt see FHQ has the race pegged currently. Rasmussen, on the other hand, has a much more optimistic view of both the Democrat's and the Republican's position in the race, seemingly at the expense of independent, Chris Daggett. That is the real difference here: that Daggett has twice as much support in the PPP poll than in the Rasmussen one. Of course, the PPP survey also found that Daggett's unfavorables are rising and that he is more likely to hurt Corzine than Christie. 44% of Daggett supporters called Corzine their second choice to only 32% for Christie. The independent continues to play the wildcard in this race. Christie, however, maintains the advantage. The Republican actually gained a bit today (a function of the fact that yesterday's 33% in the Suffolk poll was replaced by the Rasmussen 46% as the most recent, fully weighted survey). Corzine, meanwhile, held steady.

What will tomorrow bring?

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