{"id":40802235996,"date":"2012-11-09T17:04:00","date_gmt":"2012-11-09T22:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/2012\/11\/09\/hurricane-sandy-and-the-election-in-new-jersey\/"},"modified":"2021-01-25T11:22:05","modified_gmt":"2021-01-25T16:22:05","slug":"hurricane-sandy-and-the-election-in-new-jersey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/2012\/11\/09\/hurricane-sandy-and-the-election-in-new-jersey\/","title":{"rendered":"Hurricane Sandy and the Election in New Jersey"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

An unknown number of provisional ballots remain to be counted in New Jersey, but a few threads are emerging on the presidential election.\u00a0 Turnout in the Garden State was down by a lot.\u00a0 Currently, the number of people who casts votes in the presidential election about 500,000 less than in 2008 \u2013 about a 14% drop.<\/p>\n

That gap will certainly shrink as provisional ballots are tallied, but it will still mark the biggest drop in turnout of all the states.\u00a0 Nationwide estimates provided by Edison Research of Somerville \u2013 the firm that conducts the TV networks\u2019 exit poll \u2013 suggest that turnout will only have dropped by about 2% nationally compared to 2008.\u00a0 New Jersey\u2019s turnout is far behind that figure.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s assume that total turnout in New Jersey ends up being nearly 3.5 million.\u00a0 This represents about 63% of registered voters, which would be the lowest percentage on record since 1972, when 18-year olds were given the right to vote.\u00a0 But the voter rolls may not be the best base for comparison.\u00a0 Registration numbers took a big jump in 2008 because of concerted registration efforts and in 1996 because of the Motor Voter law. Prior to that, fewer eligible voters were actually registered.<\/p>\n

If we consider turnout as a percentage of the total voting age population (VAP) or of the voting eligible population (VEP), this year\u2019s numbers hold up against past elections.\u00a0 Using about 3.5 million voters as a final estimate, New Jersey turnout may wind up being 51% of VAP or 59% of VEP. \u00a0Those results either match or exceed statewide turnout in both 1996 and 2000.<\/p>\n

Given what the state has gone through over the past two weeks, these turnout numbers don\u2019t look all that bad.<\/p>\n

Now let\u2019s look at how New Jersey voted in the presidential contest.\u00a0 Nationwide, Barack Obama\u2019s winning margin was smaller than it was in 2008.\u00a0 This trend was true in nearly every state.\u00a0 In fact, only four states showed Obama improve on his margin from four years ago.<\/p>\n

These four states include Alaska, where he narrowed his losing gap by 8 points, and the Gulf States of Louisiana and Mississippi, where he lost by about a point and a half less than in 2008.<\/p>\n

And this group also includes one blue state where Obama actually increased his winning margin.\u00a0 That would be New Jersey, where the president\u2019s margin went from about 15.5 points in 2008 to 17 points this year.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth noting that polls conducted before Hurricane Sandy hit the state showed Obama with only a 12 point lead on average.\u00a0 It\u2019s also worth noting that those same polls showed U.S. Senate incumbent Bob Menendez with an average 19 point lead \u2013 which is what he actually got on Election Day.<\/p>\n

There is no doubt that Hurricane\/Superstorm Sandy had an impact on how New Jersey voted in the presidential race — 54% of New Jersey voters told exit pollsters that Obama’s response to the disaster was an important factor in their vote.\u00a0 Some observers, though, put Obama’s winning margin down to a lower turnout in the harder hit Republican shore towns.\u00a0 This certainly happened, but Democratic urban areas were also affected.<\/p>\n

Using the preliminary vote counts, turnout in Ocean County was down about 19% compared to 2008.\u00a0 But it was also down 19% in Essex County and 17% in Hudson County.<\/p>\n

The difference is who turned out in those counties.\u00a0 Obama cut his losing margin in Ocean County from about 18.5 points in 2008 to 17.5 points in 2012.\u00a0 And he improved his winning margins in Essex by 3 points and Hudson by 9 points.<\/p>\n

In Gloucester County, an area of the state spared most of Sandy\u2019s wrath, turnout was down by just 4%.\u00a0 Obama\u2019s winning margin there went from 12 points in 2008 to just under 11 points this year.\u00a0 Based on this result, even if more voters could have made it out to vote, Obama\u2019s statewide margin may have dropped by only a couple of points.\u00a0 This is still better than how he was doing in Garden State polls prior to Sandy.<\/p>\n

A note on national polling:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

It appears that nearly all national polls performed well within their individual margins of error, but most \u2013 including Monmouth\u2019s \u2013 had a slight Republican skew in the nominal horse race.\u00a0 So all those folks who claimed that we needed to \u201cunskew\u201d the polls were partially right.\u00a0 They just had it in the wrong direction \u2013 which they would never admit, of course.\u00a0 As Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly asked Karl Rove, \u201cIs this just math that you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better or is this real?\u201d\u00a0 As we now know, it\u2019s definitely not the latter.<\/p>\n

My first-read suggests that the pollsters who came closest to the mark \u2013 which may end up being as much as a 3 point win for Obama when all the votes are counted \u2013 employed samples with more voters who are contactable by cell phone only.\u00a0 This gibes with the exit poll findings that showed an increase in the proportion of the electorate who were under the age 30 or not Caucasian (i.e. Black, Latino, and Asian).\u00a0 Young voters made up 19% of the electorate \u2013 compared to 18% in 2008 \u2013 and non-white voters comprised 28% of the electorate \u2013 up from a then-record 26% in 2008.<\/p>\n

These groups are emerging as solid Democratic voting blocs.\u00a0 As recently as eight years ago, young voters and Asians, and to a lesser extent Latinos, were much more up for grabs to the GOP.\u00a0 Now they are solidly Democratic \u2013 and they are reachable only by cell phone or other electronic device.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at\u00a0PolitickerNJ An unknown number of provisional ballots remain to be counted in New Jersey, but a few threads are emerging on the presidential election.\u00a0 Turnout in the Garden State was down by a lot.\u00a0 Currently, the number of people who casts votes in the presidential election about 500,000 less than in 2008 \u2013 about […]<\/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-40802235996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802235996","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=40802235996"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802235996\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40802244161,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802235996\/revisions\/40802244161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40802235996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40802235996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40802235996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}