{"id":40802235957,"date":"2013-11-06T13:52:00","date_gmt":"2013-11-06T18:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/2013\/11\/06\/nj-election-bullet-points\/"},"modified":"2021-01-25T11:22:04","modified_gmt":"2021-01-25T16:22:04","slug":"nj-election-bullet-points","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/2013\/11\/06\/nj-election-bullet-points\/","title":{"rendered":"NJ Election Bullet Points"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

2016 Outlook<\/strong><\/p>\n

Twenty point margin in a blue state?\u00a0 Check.<\/p>\n

Win the Latino vote?\u00a0 Check.<\/p>\n

Win women, perform well among union members and young voters?\u00a0 Check.<\/p>\n

Win these same voters in a hypothetical 2016 presidential match-up?\u00a0 Oops.<\/p>\n

Takeaway:\u00a0 Issues like same-sex marriage, abortion, and minimum wage are not all that important to Democratic-leaning voters in New Jersey when they vote for governor.\u00a0 [Something Barbara Buono never quite figured out<\/a>.]\u00a0 However, these issues become very relevant to these same \u201cblue\u201d voting blocs when they consider Christie as potential presidential timber.<\/p>\n

Coattails<\/strong><\/p>\n

There were none.\u00a0 Zip. Zero. Nada.\u00a0 In the first district, Assemblyman Nelson Albano was hoisted on his own petard.\u00a0 It looks like there may be one GOP pick-up in the 38th that could be attributed to coattails.\u00a0 That\u2019s it.<\/p>\n

The Democrats saw the Christie tsunami coming and realized they needed to ride that wave to survive.\u00a0 They used his own \u201cbipartisanship\u201d mantra to tout their cooperation with the governor on key points.\u00a0 Their GOTV effort worked hard to get voters to split their tickets \u2013 voting Republican for governor and Democratic for legislature.<\/p>\n

The South Jersey incumbent legislators were particularly adept at this.\u00a0 Take a look at the vote totals from the state\u2019s five southernmost counties (Atlantic, Cape May, Cumberland, Salem, Gloucester).\u00a0 According to the unofficial results, Christie won these five counties with 143,799 votes to 76,623 for Buono.\u00a0 However, the Democratic candidates for state Senate in these counties took 117,316 votes to 97,696 for the GOP slate.<\/p>\n

That means about 40,000 voters supported the Republican for governor and the Democrats for senate.\u00a0 In other words, nearly 1-in-5 voters who went to the polls in those counties yesterday split their tickets \u2013 an amazing feat!<\/p>\n

Turnout<\/strong><\/p>\n

Just 38% of registered voters showed up yesterday.\u00a0 That compares to 47% in 2009 \u2013 which set a then-record low for a governor\u2019s race in New Jersey. Yesterday\u2019s turnout is now the absolute lowest turnout on record of any November election where a statewide office (Governor\/US Senate) topped the ballot.\u00a0 The special Senate election three weeks ago \u2013 at 24% turnout \u2013 set the all-time low for any general election regardless of which office topped the ballot.<\/p>\n

Looked at another way, Gov. Christie won the support of 23% of registered voters to 15% for Buono, whereas 6-in-10 registered voters apparently cast their ballots for \u201cmeh!\u201d<\/p>\n

Bottom Line<\/strong><\/p>\n

Countervailing messages came out of yesterday\u2019s election.\u00a0 \u201cThe Governor\u201d was a very powerful brand, but not much beyond that.\u00a0 I fully expect that Team Christie will successfully highlight the positive and downplay the negative, as they have been doing for the past four years.<\/p>\n

Check\u00a0here for more details from yesterday\u2019s exit polls<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at\u00a0PolitickerNJ 2016 Outlook Twenty point margin in a blue state?\u00a0 Check. Win the Latino vote?\u00a0 Check. Win women, perform well among union members and young voters?\u00a0 Check. Win these same voters in a hypothetical 2016 presidential match-up?\u00a0 Oops. Takeaway:\u00a0 Issues like same-sex marriage, abortion, and minimum wage are not all that important to Democratic-leaning […]<\/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-40802235957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802235957","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=40802235957"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802235957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40802244185,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802235957\/revisions\/40802244185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40802235957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40802235957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40802235957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}