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NJ-Gov: Two More Terrible Polls for Corzine

by: DavidNYC

Thu Apr 23, 2009 at 3:19 PM EDT


Quinnipiac (4/14/-20, registered voters, March 2009 in parens):

Jon Corzine (D-inc): 38 (37)
Chris Christie (R): 45 (46)
Undecided: 14 (15)
(MoE: 2.1%)

Strategic Vision (R) (4/17-19, registered voters, no trendlines):

Jon Corzine (D-inc): 36
Chris Christie (R): 47
Undecided: 16
(MoE: 3%)

Both pollsters also test Corzine against a variety of lesser GOP candidates, and the numbers are pretty dispiriting - mostly a series of small leads for Corzine, but that's due to name rec.

It's the GOP primary where things get funkadelic. Strategic Vision gives Christie a 40-15 lead over his nearest competitor, former Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan. But Q-pac has Christie up 39-24 among RVs and just 46-37 among LVs. I suppose we'd rather face the more conservative Lonegan, but does he have time to pull it out? The primary is on June 2nd. I'm not even sure how big a difference it would make - Q has them tied at 41, even though Lonegan is unknown by 72% of the state.

One interesting side-note: The same Q-Poll (different press release) finds that New Jersey voters approve of gay marriage by a 49-43 margin, a twelve-point shift in favor from two years ago. These numbers aren't quite like the 14-point margin in favor in neighboring New York, but perhaps Corzine will start pushing this issue nonetheless.

NJ has civil unions, but a state panel found in December that they don't provide full equality and recommended passage of a gay marriage bill. Corzine said he'd sign such legislation, but he hasn't made it a signature issue like David Paterson has - yet. Even though only a small plurality supports gay marriage, it might nonetheless make political sense to push it. If Corzine does win, it'll almost certainly be by a very narrow margin, and Karl Rove showed you can win elections like that by playing hard to issues which sharply divide the electorate, as long as slightly more voters are on your side.

New Jersey is intimately familiar with bitter, partisan races, and if Corzine wants to survive, he might have to wage some serious trench warfare.
DavidNYC :: NJ-Gov: Two More Terrible Polls for Corzine
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NJ-Gov: Two More Terrible Polls for Corzine | 29 comments
I like how gay marriage is becoming a progressive wedge issue
At least in the Blue States.  People often portray "value voters" as a strictly conservative phenomena, but up here in Massachusetts I know plenty of people who are conservative economically, but vote Dem on social issues.

28, Unenrolled, MA-08
The problem with aggressively using
gay marriage as a wedge issue is that you have the real possibility of turning off blacks and Hispanics who vote Democratic as a habit.  That's not an issue if Obama is on the ballot, but it is tougher if when he is not.
It is probably easier to portray the Repubs as bigots and closed minded.
[ Parent ]
You don't think blacks and Latinos
would be supportive of pushing a civil rights issue?  I don't buy it.  My experience is that individuals from those groups are far more open to the issue than the folks that push that CW garbarge tend to believe.

http://www.bluearkansasblog.com
[ Parent ]
It will take effort to get them
to see it that way.  70% of blacks voted for Prop 8.  57% of Hispanics did the same.  Whites (and Asians) rejected discrimination in California.

The black and Hispanic evangelical churches have a lot of pull on this.  The Catholic church has some pull too, but it seems like Hispanic Catholics are more likely to back gay rights than their evangelical counterparts.

[ Parent ]
All the more reason for us to push the issue.
[ Parent ]
Blacks
are the only demographic group in New York opposed to gay marriage...and by huge numbers too.  

Liberty Avenue Politics - a place for politics in Southern Queens
[ Parent ]
And just how often
have those of us pushing for gay rights specifically and positively engaged the African American community on the issue?  This is what happens when you see groups of people as voting blocks-people get left out of discussions on important issues and end up voting against us.

http://www.bluearkansasblog.com
[ Parent ]
That's the problem, they're not
but honestly when they are (I've met and talked to some inner city gay rights activists at HRC events), they're not getting anywhere. A lot of black communities are very close to Evangelicals in their religiousness.

Liberty Avenue Politics - a place for politics in Southern Queens
[ Parent ]
What about Latinos?
Do you believe the numbers that show a majority of Latinos in NY supportive of gay marriage?

I get the impression that the Latino Catholics tend to ignore their church on these issues more than Latino evangelicals.

[ Parent ]
Latinos have been hard to crack too
but these polls actually give me some hope. My experience with many Latinos has been one of skepticism on gay rights...but you're right that Latinos tend to ignore the Catholic church on issues like this.  

Liberty Avenue Politics - a place for politics in Southern Queens
[ Parent ]
Now wait a minute.
I live in fucking Arkansas and when I tell black men and women alike I'm gay it's usually no big deal and when I talk about gay rights I usually get somewhere.  Granted, I'm white, and there are some complexities that come to the discussion when discussing LGBT Americans of color, but still, if I can get somewhere in the fucking south surely but activists can't break ground in New York they must be doing something wrong.

http://www.bluearkansasblog.com
[ Parent ]
44-49 is not huge numbers
I agree with ARDem though, the equality folks target their message to middle class white suburbanites, which is a mistake.  Outreach to urban and minority communities is needed.

28, Unenrolled, MA-08
[ Parent ]
SUSA
had it at 34-59, which quite honestly I think is closer to the truth and SUSA is much more reliable polling firm.

Liberty Avenue Politics - a place for politics in Southern Queens
[ Parent ]
Siena
Had racial crosstabs (PDF, p. 8) on the gay marriage question. Whites were 56-33 pro, blacks were 44-49 against, and Latinos were 57-31 pro. However, Siena doesn't tell us what the subsample size is for each group, so the MoEs could be berserk.
[ Parent ]
SUSA's crosstabs
53-43 white, 34-59 black, 53-38 latino.  

Liberty Avenue Politics - a place for politics in Southern Queens
[ Parent ]
LInk please?

[ Parent ]
He's right
[ Parent ]
Here's the thing with Corzine.
He's never been a stellar governor and this mess he's gotten himself into is much his own doing.  When your state is struggling to get its budget together and your governor gets in a car crash because he decided that mediating between Don Imus and the girls' basketball team he pissed off demanded his time and personal touch, then you have a really crappy governor.  So if the dipshit goes down, let's not shed too many tears for him.

http://www.bluearkansasblog.com
Corzine is not relevant
I don't want to see some piece of trash Repub elected in New Jersey.
[ Parent ]
Neither do I.
That's why I'm settling for a piece of trash Democrat named Corzine.

http://www.bluearkansasblog.com
[ Parent ]
Christie is a corrupt thug as NJ will soon learn
This is how Christie goes down: http://www.dailyrecord.com/art...

And you just wait until Leahy gets to do some more digging on the US attys, Christie, that morbidly obese corrupt clown will be crying on the teevee begging forgiveness.

[ Parent ]
The only thing that will save Corzine is competent governing
Another 50 million dollar campaign won't do him any good this time. Please, no more gimmicks. Just run the state in a way that most of the people will find acceptable. However his approval rating should be higher just because he never appointed his gay lover to an important government job, and he never lied to rescue workers about the air quality at Ground Zero.

26, male, Dem, NJ-12
Way too late for that
The only way Corzine can win is to remind people in New Jersey why they hate Repubs.

And I think he will do that and will come back and pull off the upset.

[ Parent ]
I think it's largely out of Corzine's hands now......
Corzine needs the economy to recover fast in New Jersey and nationally.  If that happens, only then do a good campaign combined with the state's Democratic reflex carry the day.  Corzine needs people simply to be not-made-anymore.

I know we always like to say NJ is a big tease for the Rethugs, but you know it's always the case once one settles into a notion of permanent anything in politics, something happens to throw a monkey wrench into the CW.  This time is different, Christie is a real threat, and NJ voters will give him a chance if he doesn't screw up his own campaign or unless Corzine gets help from forces out of his control.

To put it all another way:  if the party labels and political leanings of the state were reversed, we'd all giddily say Corzine is toast without a Christie implosion.

43, male, Indian-American, Democrat, VA-10

Don't necessarily agree
NJ's unemployment rate is below the national average and compares favorably to states like Florida, South Carolina, California and Michigan.  Corzine needs to stop alienating his base and making people doubt Christie and he can win regardless of whether the economy approves.
[ Parent ]
And yet Bloomie is cruising to another term
as NYC mayor.

Go figure.

We've seen bad polls for Dems in NJ before
And the Dem generally pulls it out.

Even when a Florio-scale epic meltdown occurs and the GOP borrows an office for a spell, their winning margin is narrow.

Jersey is just a tough nut for the GOP to crack... however poorly NJ Dems govern... however blatant their indiscretions... Their worst case sscenario is a squeaker.

Heck, considering Corzine is not down 20 points, I am encouraged.

"Rather face Lonegan"
I live in NJ and I don't want to chance it.  The man's so far right he makes Rick Perry look like a moderate.
I disagree
I would prefer a far right Rethug over a moderate Repub in a state like NJ.  Lonegan as Governor would discredit the Repubs there, while Christie would make the Repubs stronger.

And Lonegan won't win.  He will be like Bret Schundler.

[ Parent ]
NJ-Gov: Two More Terrible Polls for Corzine | 29 comments

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