On Friday morning, my polling forecast showed incumbent Democratic Governor Jon Corzine with a 60% chance to win re-election. Since that time, nine new polls have been released, five of which show Republican Chris Christie with a narrow advantage.
Collectively, those polls have tipped the polling forecast ever so slightly in Christie's favor. He now leads the (nearly) final polling average by 0.09%. Further, going back to 2004, my research shows that the Democratic nominee in statewide campaigns gained 0.10% or more from the final poll margin to the final vote margin in only 55 of 130, or 42.3%, of the statewide elections I have examined. So, the odds are now in (barely) Christie's favor.
Then again, looking at only the 30 elections in that range with 10 or more polls, Democrats made up that much ground in 16 cases, or 53%. I am sticking with the 42% as the headline, given the smaller number of cases, with so many polls, but perhaps this is a true coin flip. Here are the numbers:
New Jersey Governor's Race, 2009
All polls with majority of interviews conducted 10/19 or later
| Pollster |
Mid-Date |
Corzine |
Christie |
Daggett |
| Total |
10/30 |
41.29 |
41.38 |
10.86 |
| PPP |
11/01 |
41 |
47 |
11 |
| Democracy Corps |
10/31 |
41 |
37 |
15 |
| Monmouth |
10/31 |
43 |
41 |
8 |
| Survey USA |
10/31 |
42 |
45 |
10 |
| Quinnipiac |
10/30 |
40 |
42 |
12 |
| Monmouth |
10/29 |
42 |
43 |
8 |
| YouGov |
10/29 |
43 |
41 |
8 |
| Rasmussen |
10/29 |
43 |
46 |
8 |
| Zogby |
10/28 |
40 |
39 |
14 |
| Democracy Corps |
10/28 |
43 |
38 |
12 |
| Neighborhood |
10/28 |
35 |
42 |
8 |
| Daily Kos |
10/27 |
41 |
42 |
14 |
| Survey USA |
10/27 |
43 |
43 |
11 |
| Rasmussen |
10/26 |
43 |
46 |
6 |
| FDU |
10/25 |
44 |
43 |
11 |
| PPP |
10/25 |
38 |
42 |
13 |
| Suffolk |
10/24 |
42 |
33 |
7 |
| Quinnipiac |
10/23 |
43 |
38 |
13 |
| Democracy Corps |
10/21 |
42 |
39 |
13 |
| Survey USA |
10/20 |
39 |
41 |
19 |
| Rasmussen |
10/19 |
39 |
41 |
11 |
As I also wrote in Friday's forecast, there is little evidence to support the theory that Democrats in New Jersey do much better in the final vote margin than in the final poll margin. Further, even if such a trend had appeared in the numbers, the number of supporting data points would be very small. Going all the way back to 1996, and not counting this year, there have been only twelve Presidential, Senatorial, and Gubernatorial elections in the Garden state combined. That simply is not enough data from which any reliable conclusions can be drawn.
The bright side, I suppose, is that Corzine actually still has a 42.3% chance to win. As recently as September 21st, Corzine was still trailing by 6.50%, which would have given him only a 1.5% chance to win. That is a lot worse than 42.3%, and a reason to be optimistic tomorrow. |
