{"id":40802235933,"date":"2014-06-04T15:09:00","date_gmt":"2014-06-04T19:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/2014\/06\/04\/new-jersey-2014-primary-day-recap\/"},"modified":"2021-01-25T11:22:04","modified_gmt":"2021-01-25T16:22:04","slug":"new-jersey-2014-primary-day-recap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/2014\/06\/04\/new-jersey-2014-primary-day-recap\/","title":{"rendered":"New Jersey 2014 Primary Day Recap"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at\u00a0PolitickerNJ<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a look at yesterday\u2019s vote by the numbers.\u00a0 It\u2019s long, but worth the read for those interested in GOTV targeting and ballot position logistics.<\/p>\n

House District 3 \u2013 Republicans<\/strong><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with the least surprising outcome.\u00a0 Tom MacArthur won by a lot, as expected, because the county chairs \u2013 George Gilmore in Ocean and Bill Layton in Burlington \u2013 didn\u2019t want their local candidates hobbled in November by sharing a ticket with Steve Lonegan.<\/p>\n

MacArthur\u2019s 20 point margin was also fed by the low turnout.\u00a0 The normal base electorate in CD03 is moderate senior citizens.\u00a0 Lonegan needed to expand the base by turning out younger libertarian types who do not normally vote in primaries.\u00a0 His vitriolic personal attacks on MacArthur did the opposite and only 25,000 Republicans showed up to vote \u2013 a normal turnout in a less competitive race.<\/p>\n

House District 12 \u2013 Democrats<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was fairly certain all along that the underlying fundamentals of this district would result in a Bonnie Watson Coleman victory.\u00a0 But I never foresaw by how much.\u00a0 This \u201cneck-and-neck\u201d race turned into a 15 point rout! And on very high turnout \u2013 over 35,000 voters \u2013 to boot.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how it happened by the numbers.\u00a0 Each candidate had a certain threshold they needed to achieve.\u00a0 In order to squeak out a win, Linda Greenstein needed a minimum of 6,000 to 7,000 votes out of her home county of Middlesex, about 2,700 out of Mercer, 700 out of Union, and 400 out of Somerset.\u00a0 She just reached those minimum levels.<\/p>\n

The problem was that Watson Coleman exceeded her needed vote counts \u2013 by a mile! Her minimum target in Mercer was 7,000 votes based on expected turnout.\u00a0 She got nearly 11,000! She was pegged to get 2,000 votes out of Union.\u00a0 She took away 3,000.\u00a0 And she met her needs in Middlesex (800) and Somerset (500).<\/p>\n

The urban vote from Trenton and Plainfield were her anchors.\u00a0 Despite Plainfield Mayor Adrian Mapp\u2019s professed concern that the local contest there would hurt Watson Coleman, she came away more than 8-in-10 votes there.\u00a0 The ballot set-up made it easy for voters to find their way to her despite who they chose in the local council race.<\/p>\n

In Trenton, the concern was turnout.\u00a0 Yesterday\u2019s primary was sandwiched between the Trenton mayor\u2019s race and its subsequent run-off.\u00a0 Certainly turnout was slightly lower than the Watson Coleman camp would have liked, but still respectable.\u00a0 And she won nearly 9-in-10 of the 5,000 Trenton voters who showed up.<\/p>\n

The real story here wasn\u2019t in the cities, though, but in the suburbs.\u00a0 The suburban Mercer portion of this district turned out an astounding 12,000 voters yesterday.\u00a0 Watson Coleman won a solid majority of these suburban voters despite the fact that Greenstein also represents some of those towns in the legislature.<\/p>\n

To put it another way, my voter model assumed that about 11,000 voters would show up in Mercer and 8,000 in Middlesex.\u00a0 \u00a0It was actually 17,000 in Mercer – 55% over expectations \u2013 and 10,700 in Middlesex \u2013 33% over expectations.<\/p>\n

The over performance in Middlesex was not too surprising.\u00a0 Many figured that a solid effort by Grenstein and county chair Kevin McCabe could get out a certain number of atypical primary voters.\u00a0 However, very few observers believed that the Watson Coleman team could match, let alone exceed, any elevated GOTV numbers Greenstein might produce.<\/p>\n

In the other parts of the district, Union\u2019s turnout of 4,000 votes was within expectations, but Somerset\u2019s 4,300 vote turnout exceeded expectations there.\u00a0 That\u2019s another part of the story that bears mentioning.<\/p>\n

Upendra Chivukula ran a solid campaign for someone who had the deck stacked against him.\u00a0 He took nearly 3,000 votes out of his home county of Somerset.\u00a0 His 68% majority there was actually better than Watson Coleman in Mercer (64%) and Greenstein in Middlesex (60%).\u00a0 He also garnered nearly 2,800 votes in Middlesex and 1,700 in Mercer.<\/p>\n

In fact, he won South Brunswick 43% to 38% \u2013 a town that was part of Greenstein\u2019s core base before redistricting in 2011.\u00a0 He also won quite a few precincts throughout Middlesex and in the Windsors that have sizable Asian populations.<\/p>\n

These numbers should give pause to anyone in Middlesex looking to throw Chivukula off the line in next year\u2019s legislative elections.\u00a0 [Chivukula\u2019s hometown of Franklin Twp is the only Somerset municipality in the 17th<\/sup>\u00a0district.]<\/p>\n

Chivukula was not the spoiler.\u00a0 Throwing his vote total in Middlesex County to Greenstein still would not have changed the outcome.\u00a0 One wildcard is whether Greenstein would have been able to nab the Somerset line if Chivukula had not run.\u00a0 But even then, she would have gotten only maybe another 1,000 to 1,500 votes because turnout there would have been lower.<\/p>\n

Chivukula performed as well as he did not just by taking votes away from Greenstein.\u00a0 He certainly did that to some degree, but he also expanded his own base by getting out the vote in the Asian community.\u00a0 That\u2019s the kind of candidate you want on your ticket in a place like Middlesex County.<\/p>\n

In the end, Bonnie Watson Coleman won this race in suburban Mercer.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think the video of Greenstein calling Mercer Dems her enemies had much impact on voters.\u00a0 But I bet it put a spur in the saddle of local party leaders, giving them even more impetus to put their GOTV efforts into hyperdrive.<\/p>\n

House District 7 \u2013 Republicans<\/strong><\/p>\n

I really didn\u2019t expect this race to be on my recap list.\u00a0 Movement conservative David Larsen has run against Leonard Lance twice before.\u00a0 The first time was for an open seat in 2010.\u00a0 Lance beat Larsen by 24 points in a field of four candidates.\u00a0 Two years ago, incumbent Lance fended off Larsen by a healthy 61% to 39% margin.<\/p>\n

This year, Lance\u2019s victory was a much slimmer 54% to 46%.\u00a0 Turnout played a major role.\u00a0 In 2012, Lance got 23,400 votes in the primary.\u00a0 This year, he took only 15,700.\u00a0 Larsen, on the other, hand nearly matched his vote total from two years ago.\u00a0 He had 15,200 votes in 2012 and 13,100 votes in 2014.\u00a0 Larsen supporters are stalwarts.\u00a0 Unlike in CD03, these core primary voters veer to the right ideologically.<\/p>\n

While Lance is safe for another two years, this primary actually had up-ballot implications and may have helped determine the winner of the GOP\u2019s US Senate nomination.<\/p>\n

U.S. Senate \u2013 Republicans<\/strong><\/p>\n

Anybody, including me, who tried to predict this outcome ended up getting burned.\u00a0 I also lost my bet to Paul Mulshine.\u00a0 No candidate reached 30% of the vote.\u00a0 The prior record for a low primary victory plurality was Brendan Byrne\u2019s 30.3% in 1977, in a much more crowded field.<\/p>\n

How did we get to this result since none of the candidates spent much, if any, money on their campaigns?\u00a0 For one, fewer than 143,000 New Jersey Republicans showed up.\u00a0 I\u2019m not even going to bother to look this one up.\u00a0 It has to be a modern day low for a contested statewide primary!<\/p>\n

This low turnout race came down to county lines and ballot positions.\u00a0 If you never believed either factor matters much, read on and be amazed!<\/p>\n

Fourteen of New Jersey\u2019s 21 county GOP organizations endorsed a candidate in the US Senate race.\u00a0 That chosen candidate won 11 of those 14 counties.\u00a0 But that is not the whole story.<\/p>\n

There is a good deal of research on the value of nabbing the first ballot position in low-information races.\u00a0 Yesterday\u2019s primary proved that.\u00a0 Among counties with no organizational endorsement, the candidate who landed in the first ballot position won 5 of those 7 counties!\u00a0 In fact, the person who lucked out with the first ballot position came in either first or second place in 18 of New Jersey\u2019s 21 counties.<\/p>\n

I anticipated this pattern, which is why I thought Goldberg had the best shot of securing the nomination.\u00a0 He had the party line and the first position in 4 counties, the party line but not first position in 6 counties, and first position without the line in 2 counties.\u00a0 By contrast, Murray Sabrin had one line and 7 first positions.\u00a0 Rich Pezzullo had only three county lines and two first positions.\u00a0 Jeff Bell had no lines and 5 first positions.<\/p>\n

Given this distribution of lines and prime ballot position how did Jeff Bell win?<\/p>\n

Bell won 4 of the 5 counties where he had the first ballot position.\u00a0 He won Burlington, where Goldberg had the \u201cline\u201d (more on that below), and Morris County where he had the last ballot spot in a county with no endorsed candidate.\u00a0 He also took second place in 8 other counties.\u00a0 That translates to 14 \u201ctop two\u201d showings.<\/p>\n

Goldberg, on the other hand, won 7 of the 10 counties where held the line.\u00a0 Unfortunately for him, he tanked in those counties where he didn\u2019t have organizational support.\u00a0 It is an amazing juxtaposition.\u00a0 He came in dead last in 10 of the 11 counties where he did not have party support, usually failing to get out of the single digits in those counties!<\/p>\n

Goldberg also came in last in Burlington County, where he had the county endorsement.\u00a0 However, the ballot wasn\u2019t structured in lines \u2013 Goldberg was not visually linked with MacArthur running in CD03 and the local favorites.\u00a0 The names were actually stacked, with Sabrin atop Goldberg and Pezzullo in the first column and Bell all by himself in the second column.\u00a0 In practical terms, Sabrin and Bell both had \u201cfirst position\u201d on the ballot and consequently ended up tying for first in Burlington with 32% of the vote each.<\/p>\n

The lack of a visible \u201cline\u201d rendered the party endorsement meaningless for Goldberg.\u00a0 If nothing proves the importance of \u201clines\u201d and ballot positions, this one result should.<\/p>\n

The places where Goldberg had an actual line but lost were Hunterdon and Somerset.\u00a0 This is where the Lance-Larsen CD07 race comes into play.\u00a0 Conservative Rich Pezzullo won Hunterdon.\u00a0 While he wasn\u2019t bracketed with Larsen, he likely won the support of Larsen voters \u2013 who would not support any part of the organizational ticket \u2013 by virtue of being listed first on the ballot.\u00a0 A similar phenomenon occurred in Somerset, although in this case Bell was the beneficiary of drawing the first position and sopping up support from the anti-organization Larsen contingent.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s entirely possible that Pezzullo would have won the nomination if he was lucky enough to draw first ballot position in more than just two counties.\u00a0 That\u2019s how important this factor was in New Jersey\u2019s Senate primary.\u00a0 However, there may have been another issue at play here.<\/p>\n

Bell, the eventual winner, never bothered to go to any of the state\u2019s county parties to ask for their support.\u00a0 He won on the basis of being lucky enough to draw the first position in counties where no party line was awarded and by being the top choice of GOP voters who rejected their county organizations\u2019 favored candidate.\u00a0 Why him over the others?<\/p>\n

Barring ideology or other issue positions, people tend to vote for candidates who they feel are like them.\u00a0 Yesterday\u2019s election featured a low turnout base of core GOP primary stalwarts.\u00a0 Let\u2019s see, you got MURRAY Sabrin, Rich PEZZULLO, and Brian GOLDBERG on one hand.\u00a0 And then there is \u201cJeff Bell.\u201d<\/p>\n

You get just 4,000 or so GOP primary voters who make their pick based on a name they feel comfortable with, and voila – there\u2019s your nominee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at\u00a0PolitickerNJ Here\u2019s a look at yesterday\u2019s vote by the numbers.\u00a0 It\u2019s long, but worth the read for those interested in GOTV targeting and ballot position logistics. House District 3 \u2013 Republicans Let\u2019s start with the least surprising outcome.\u00a0 Tom MacArthur won by a lot, as expected, because the county chairs \u2013 George Gilmore in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":939,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40802235933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802235933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/939"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40802235933"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802235933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40802237330,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802235933\/revisions\/40802237330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40802235933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40802235933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40802235933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}