{"id":40802236077,"date":"2011-10-19T15:52:00","date_gmt":"2011-10-19T19:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/2011\/10\/19\/2011-is-no-referendum\/"},"modified":"2021-01-25T11:22:06","modified_gmt":"2021-01-25T16:22:06","slug":"2011-is-no-referendum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/2011\/10\/19\/2011-is-no-referendum\/","title":{"rendered":"2011 is No Referendum"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at PolitickerNJ<\/span><\/strong><\/i><\/i><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Governor Christie is becoming a pretty good public opinion analyst.\u00a0 Earlier this week, he noted that the Occupy Wall Street movement is not unlike the Tea Party<\/a>, saying that both grew out of an \u201cunderlying problem\u2026 that people feel like government is unresponsive and dysfunctional.\u201d\u00a0 His view is an accurate read of current polling data.<\/p>\n

That demonstration of public opinion acumen follows Christie\u2019s dead-on analysis of the upcoming legislative elections<\/a>: “In the end, I don’t think these Legislative elections are a referendum on Barack Obama or on me. I think they are a referendum on each one of these individual candidates in these individual districts.”<\/p>\n

Legislative elections are rarely referenda on the governor, 1991 being a notable exception.\u00a0 And they are never a referendum on the U.S. President (despite some GOP backroom chatter trying to get us to think otherwise). \u00a0Heck, sometimes they are not even a referendum on the legislature!<\/p>\n

Certainly, the governor is an overshadowing presence in any legislative election.\u00a0 But there are no signs that this year\u2019s contest will be a referendum in the classic sense.<\/p>\n

Technically, a referendum is a direct vote by the electorate on a single question.\u00a0 In that dictionary-definition sense, the only referendum on this year\u2019s ballot is the non-binding one to allow sports betting in the state.<\/p>\n

If we expand the term\u2019s definition to its cultural context, a \u201creferendum\u201d can occur when a particular election is used to make a statement about a larger set of issues.\u00a0 You can identify a referendum election in a number of ways.<\/p>\n

After the fact, you can look at turnout.\u00a0 A sign of a \u201creferendum\u201d election is when turnout is unusually high for all voters or a particular bloc of voters, or when there are noticeable swings in how people usually vote.<\/p>\n

For example, since most Congressional seats are safe for the incumbent, the fact that control of the House of Representatives has changed hands twice over the past four years indicates there is some sort of referendum going on.\u00a0 However, since it has gone back and forth between the parties, the message is unclear.\u00a0 This goes back to Gov. Christie\u2019s observation that the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street are really outgrowths of the same public sense that government is broken.<\/p>\n

The 2009 gubernatorial election could have been a referendum on the Corzine administration. We saw big swings toward the Republican gubernatorial candidate in Middlesex and Gloucester counties and unprecedented turnout jumps in Monmouth and Ocean.\u00a0 This suggests that many voters were thinking in terms of a referendum on Corzine, but the results did not trickle down to local races (except in Gloucester County).<\/p>\n

The makings of a \u00a0referendum election can also be detected beforehand.\u00a0 One clear sign is whether the political parties actively try to make it a referendum election.\u00a0\u00a0 A clue to this is whether they engage \u2013 i.e. spend money \u2013 on a comprehensive and cohesive messaging strategy.<\/p>\n

In New Jersey right now, we see no such effort.\u00a0 The Democrats are not running advertisements in the New York and Philadelphia media markets saying \u201cWe need to push back on the harmful Christie agenda.\u201d\u00a0 Republicans are not littering the state with flyers saying:\u00a0 \u201cWe have to take control of the legislature to speed up Governor Christie\u2019s reforms.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s just not happening.\u00a0 Follow the money.<\/p>\n

According to the most recent campaign finance reports, there are only five districts where the challenging slate has raised more than $100,000 \u2013 districts 1, 11, 14, 27, and 38.\u00a0 In each of those cases, the incumbent team has outraised the challengers by more than 2 to 1.<\/p>\n

Only two other districts show both sides with sizable campaign warchests. \u00a0District 7 is a Burlington County split district where the Democrats have outraised the Republicans $725,000 to $436,000 and district 2 in Atlantic County is a split district where each party\u2019s ticket has raised nearly $950,000.<\/p>\n

Another source of money is the state party and legislative leadership committees, and their finance reports show no major expenditures on a statewide communications strategy.\u00a0 If this were a referendum, we would also see the state wealth spread across many local races. \u00a0Looking at just the official state committees, funds have been distributed to only a handful of districts \u2013 2, 3, 7, 14, and 38 on the GOP side and 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 14, and 38 for the Democrats.<\/p>\n

Neither side is making this a referendum on Gov. Christie.\u00a0 That\u2019s because neither side could win such a referendum.\u00a0 The legislative map is doing exactly what it was designed to do \u2013 lock in the status quo<\/a>.\u00a0 There is practically no way that either party can pick up more than a couple of seats in this election.\u00a0 Thus, regardless of the outcome, both sides would \u201close\u201d a referendum vote.<\/p>\n

This is not to say that Christie won\u2019t be a presence in this campaign.\u00a0 Republican voters like him.\u00a0 Democrats don\u2019t.\u00a0 Expressing those sentiments will be a part of their vote.\u00a0 But would they vote any differently for legislature if Christie wasn\u2019t governor?<\/p>\n

Be careful with polls that purport to show a referendum brewing.\u00a0 Read the wording of those poll questions carefully.\u00a0 Of course Christie is going to have \u201csomething\u201d to do with how a person votes in this election.<\/p>\n

The real question is whether the governor\u2019s presence in this race is going to get a significant number of people either to change how they normally vote or to turn out when they normally would not.\u00a0 And the answer to that is a resounding \u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted at PolitickerNJ Governor Christie is becoming a pretty good public opinion analyst.\u00a0 Earlier this week, he noted that the Occupy Wall Street movement is not unlike the Tea Party, saying that both grew out of an \u201cunderlying problem\u2026 that people feel like government is unresponsive and dysfunctional.\u201d\u00a0 His view is an accurate read of […]<\/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-40802236077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802236077","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=40802236077"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802236077\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40802246363,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40802236077\/revisions\/40802246363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40802236077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40802236077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/polling-institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40802236077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}