We're fortunate that Rutgers Professor David Redlawsk has arranged for the first independent poll of poll of the NJ3 Congressional Race, widely believed to be the most (only?) competitive one this year. Incumbent John Adler, who has positioned himself as a conservative Democrat, faces Jon Runyan, who is a famous football player but so far seems to know very little about policy. The full PDF is available here. The headline is that Representative Adler leads in the poll, although with only 421 registered voters the margin of error is an uncomfortably larger 4.8 percent.
There are other permutations of the question, but I think these are two most important. On the one hand, Adler is ahead. On the other, he is way under 50%, a sign of danger for an incumbent. In July, Adler released an internal poll where he lead by 17 (51-34) Statistically, such poll announcements favor the releaser by an extra 6-7% or so. (That is, Adler or Runyan would only release polls that happen to show unusually large/lucky leads, while our faithful Professor releases all results.) 17-7=10, so you might call the polls in good agreement with my proposed correction. Runyan has not released anything, so it now does seem likely Adler is ahead.
Other "generic" polls of New Jersey suggest that other Democratic incuments should be fine:
A new FDU/Public Mind poll was released today that trumpets how New Jerseyans want to "hold the line on spending", and then spends the first three paragraphs of their summary discussing this, even though there were a mere two questions on the state budget in the poll. What makes this worse is that one is the generic "how much have you heard about the state budget?" and the other is a loaded question in light of Governor Christie publicly bashing all spending and government programs, teachers unions, and anything related to public employees for the past 6 months.
It would be nice if FDU actually asked questions that got to the substance of the state budget issue before a declaration that New Jersey voters want to "hold the line on spending". For example, the one question asked the following loaded frame:
In order to balance the budget, some people say the state should hold the line on spending even if many programs are reduced. Others say to balance the budget the state should raise taxes if necessary and continue to support state programs. Which position comes closest to your view?
Now, this is a load of crap in terms of a question. What "some people are saying" is that taxes on the state's wealthiest should not be cut at the expense of these programs. What "some people are saying" is that there shouldn't be a corporate tax cut at the expense of these programs. What "some people are saying" is that there shouldn't be a $1 BILLION tax cut at the expense of cutting programs for seniors, for women's health, for cutting public transportation services, for cutting education funding or for raising fees for just about everything (but don't call it a tax, of course).
What I want to see is a poll that asks the following questions in terms of Christie's choices and the budget:
Are you ok with having less garbage collection/less snow removal/slower emergency response time at the expense of lower taxes on the state's highest earners?
Are you ok with having higher fees for public transportation and lower levels of essential services so that those earning over $400,000 can enjoy a tax break?
Do you think that those earning over $1,000,000 deserve a tax cut in this economic climate?
Are you in favor of eliminating services such as auto inspections if it means a greater likelihood of dangerous automobiles being on the roads?
Given the recent scandals with private debt collectors and the NJ tax department, are you in favor of an initiative to privatize other debt collection services?
Those are just a few of the many real and true questions that should be asked of NJ voters when it comes to what Governor Christie is choosing to do in this state. When the corporate media is stretched thin and the signal-to-noise ratio is extremely low and the Governor has the biggest bully pulpit to act the part, most voters don't know what is actually going on.
And the voters are being done a disservice when they are being polled with loaded questions that don't explain just what is being done to them.
Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com has put out a new set of pollster rankings (methodology here and reponse to complaints here) and I notice our New Jersey pollsters did off pretty well. His "Pollster Induced Error" (PIE) statistics is meant to capture "the amount of error that a pollster introduces above and beyond that which is unavoidable due to things like sampling variance. The lower a firm's PIE the better." Farleigh Dickinson (1.75), Rutgers (1.76), and Gannett/Monmouth (2.17) are all better than the default rating. Ratings are primarily based on how well polls within the last 21 days predict the outcome of the election over the last decade.
I should note, though, there is a statistical correction ("reversion to the mean") in which:
...the ratings for polling firms which were members of NCPP, or which had signed onto the AAPOR Transparency Initiative, as of June 1, 2010, are regressed toward a different mean than those which hadn't. Essentially, then, polling firms are rewarded for having made a public commitment to disclosure and transparency -- but the basis for rewarding them is statistical rather than ideological.
FDU and Rutgers both have met this criterion, but to my surprise
Gannett/Monmouth (according to 538) has not, and so I imagine it suffers slightly in this rating system. If this is an error by Silver, Patrick Murray might want to correct it. There certainly seems to me to quite good details in their releases.
Survey USA is out with a new poll that shows Governor Christie's approval rating upside down. Here's the report from ABC 7:The Governor stands at 33% approval, 63% disapproval, but he says he could care less. I don't see the poll posted on their website yet, but I'll put it up when they do. It didn't take very long for voters to get buyers remorse. Then he went on to say this:
"Almost everyone of those polls said I wasn't going to win too, well, here I am," said Governor Christie.
Actually as I remember it, Christie led nearly the whole way with the polls closing at the end. Funny, thats how Pollster.com remembers it too. Out of 86 polls taken between October 2008 and November 2009, only 19 of them ever showed Corzine leading Christie. He's said he's not good at math, but I don't think that 22% of the polls is almost ever one.
We're lucky to have poll releases today from Monmouth/Gannett (full PDF) and Rutgers Eagleton (full PDF) on New Jersey budget issues. Some of the Eagleton results were released earlier in the week. I'll mention the FDU poll which is about a month older, but still after the budget speech, and which is more favorable to Christie. In fairness, you should also keep in mind that Governor Corzine's budget proposals were not very popular either.
First, Governor Christies' approval rating is going down in all polls:
Monmouth: 22% satisfied, 32% "can live with it," 44% dissatisfied
Ealgeton: 13% "very pleased," 30% "pleased," "21% somewhat displeased," "29% very displeased"
FDU poll: 38% favorable, 39% unfavorable.
The Eagleton poll asked about what areas should be cut. If you suspect the public likes government spending and dislikes taxes you won't be surprised by their conclusions:
"Our recent poll showed that half of New Jerseyans are displeased with Governor Chris Christie's proposed budget," said David Redlawsk, director of the Rutgers-Eagleton Poll and professor of political science at Rutgers University. "These new results give a good sense of residents' priorities in this difficult time. Laying off teachers or significantly cutting school aid are not seen as solutions. On the other hand, given today's economic challenges, people do not want to see their own costs increase either. The state is between a rock and a hard place, with clear support for a limited number of solutions, one of which is cuts to municipal government."
The public also opposes cuts to aid for the poor in the Eagleton poll, and state colleges scored nearly as well as public (K-12) schools. Here's the quote from the Monmouth release:
"The local aid reduction, particularly to schools, was always going to be the flashpoint for criticism of the plan, and the governor's clash with the NJEA only increased the heat. If part of his strategy was to win over public opinion, it hasn't been an overwhelming success," said [Monmouth pollster] Murray.
One contradiction between the two polls is that Monmouth asked about "cuts in aid to local school districts and towns" which the public denounced as unfair. Eagleton asked about schools, towns, and other possibilities separately, so it found school cuts unpopular but municipal cuts supported. On the other hand, Monmouth also picked up that more voters say they will vote against school budgets than vote for them which you might consider a little inconsistent.
As Hopeful notes below, a new poll by FDU shows (1) a dead heat between Senator Menendez and Tom Kean, Jr. for a race that is over two years from now, and (2) a very mixed bag on what people in NJ think about health care reform.
As Hopeful notes, 42% of New Jerseyans think that they personally will be worse off if the current health care reform bill passes, while 37% feel that they personally will be better off if the current health care reform bill passes. However, that 5% spread is reversed when the question is asked about the country as a whole, with a 45% - 40% margin indicating that the current health care bill will be better for the country. Adding to this, there is a 5% margin (40% against, 35% for, 25% don't know) when it comes to whether respondents would urge THEIR member of Congress to vote for or against ANY health care bill.
"Our United States Senators should finally listen to the majority of New Jerseyans and support a fresh approach to reforming our health insurance industry."
What's more, Kean said that the suspicious timing of his pontificating was merely "happenstance".
Now, say what you want about the current health care bill - there certainly is more than enough things to like and dislike about the bill on an individual level, but the one thing that can NOT be said is what Kean is asserting about "a fresh approach". It is either (1) is this bill good for me, (2) is this bill good for the rest of the country or (3) do you want your Congressman to vote for ANY bill. If Kean wants to be taken seriously, then he should actually say things that are accurate - especially when it comes to issues that he claims to represent "the majority of New Jerseyans" on and issues where he hopes to represent all of New Jerseyans.
When reached for comment, Adam L a/k/a clammyc noted that the timing of this post was merely "happenstance".
I wanted to bring your attention to an interesting post by Nate Silver of 538.com on The Myth of the Incumbent 50% Rule. He's prompted by the claim that incumbents get only the same percentage of the vote as they do in early polling, and therefore incumbents under 50% almost always lose. Here's his conclusion:
1) It is extremely common for an incumbent come back to win re-election while having less than 50 percent of the vote in early polls.
2) In comparison to early polls, there is no demonstrable tendency for challengers to pick up a larger share of the undecided vote than incumbents.
3) Incumbents almost always get a larger share of the actual vote than they do in early polls (as do challengers). They do not "get what they get in the tracking"; they almost always get more...
It is probably OK to focus on an incumbent's vote share in early polls while downplaying the challenger's number, but if you do, you need to add 6-7 percent to it to have the most accurate prediction of his likely performance in November.
Silver's data, which you can see by clicking through, shows that incumbents who poll 45% in January-June usually win -- like Frank Lautenberg in 2008, at only 45.7%, who got to 56% on election day -- and overall 19 of 30 incumbents under 50% end up winning. (Incumbents over 50% are safe.) In short, undecideds do not usually break overwhelmingly to the challengers as conventional wisdom tell us. Mark Blumenthal of Pollster.com says Nate is right, and explains that the "myth" is largely based on old races. I recall, but can't find the link, that kos recently found half of incumbents polling under 50% lose and half win. Many Democratic learned this lesson in the 2004 Presidential election, where Bush won despite many polls putting him under 50%. Here in New Jersey, Menendez won despite being below 40% (though he was appointed) and Corzine lost, but did get that 7 point surge.
I can't help but wonder if this speaks to the famous New Jersey election effect -- that Democrats poll too low. Perhaps instead of looking for a Jersey explanation, it's just that Democrats here poll the way incumbents do nationwide.
At a gut level, the public is divided. As a policy issue, most people don't really care one way or the other.
He goes through the evidence that both sides have mid-to-upper 40s but that it's just not a priority for many people. He makes a strong argument rejecting the claim that marriage must be decided by a referendum:
The public should absolutely have the final say on any situation that involves state borrowing. I also think a constitutional convention - where the public gives a straight up or down vote on the outcome - is worth serious consideration in New Jersey right now.
But the founders of our country - or at least James Madison in the Federalist Papers - were fairly clear that any issue affecting the rights of a minority should be determined within a deliberative setting. And general elections almost never meet the criterion of being deliberative - as anyone who followed this year's vacuous gubernatorial race will attest.
Also interesting is his view -- as a political scientist, statistician, and pollster -- of the panel that found that civil unions are not working:
I actually met with the Commission in August 2007 to discuss a potential study on civil unions. Ideally, the research would have interviewed a sample of civil union couples and a matching sample of married couples to see if the former were systematically experiencing any roadblocks that the latter were not. For various reasons (costs, logistics), the study was never conducted.
Though cost is certainly a concern anything that would reveal the truth about civil unions' failures more convincingly should be considered -- though, as Murray notes, opponents may not care what the truth is.
He finally goes on to ask why the state recognizes marriage at all? This related point that perhaps states should not be in marriage business at all has often been debated on liberal blogs (DBK raised it here today). Personally I don't care for that argument, but rather than discuss it here, I guess I'll have to write that "Why I Support Marriage Equality" post tomorrow after all.
Adam Geller, who polled for Chris Christie, has written a great analysis of the 2009 New Jersey polls for pollster.com. I really think you should read it if you had any interest in following the campaign here. Let me just highlight the parts I found most interesting.
Before the election, we discussed how the robotic (IRV) polls consistently showed a Christie lead while the human interview polls often showed a tied race or a Corzine lead. The election results obviously make the IRV polls look great. That's worth remembering on its own since we often hear that they're a new methodology that is not reliable. Well, that piece of folk wisdom is wrong. So what does Geller have to say about it? He acknowledges the issue but says it is a matter of other choices made the pollster rather than the humans. I wonder. I get the impression he is going to great lengths avoiding the conclusion that the IRV polls are better.
He argues that public polls should report their partisan spread and that they oversampled non-voters. He discusses the huge problem of the undeclared voters. He cautions that some pollsters (Carville, cough, cough, Shaftan, cough) may have an agenda. I think all of that is straightforward and we at least touched on these issues during the campaign.
What was new to me was his criticism of "random digit dialing" (RDD), where the pollster dials random digits, to make up random phone numbers, and then reach random potential voters. Here's what he says:
In general, RDD methodology is a bad choice in New Jersey, if the goal is predictive accuracy.
In New Jersey, there are many undeclared voters (commonly but mistakenly referred to as Independents). These undeclared voters identify themselves as Republicans or Democrats - even though they are not registered that way. In our polls, we frequently showed a Democrat registration advantage that matched their actual registration advantage - but when it came to partisan ID, the spread was more like a six point Democrat advantage. By using a voter list, we knew how a respondent was registered - and by seeing how they ID'ed themselves, we gained insight into the relative behavioral trends of undeclared voters and even registered Democrats who were self identifying as Independents. Public pollsters who dialed RDD missed this. Partisan identification in New Jersey is not enough, if the goal is to "get it right."
That makes a lot of sense to me. It must be more expensive and difficult to work from voter lists, but basing your turnout models on actual voters who really voted might work better. It also helps with this huge problem of people who think they are (say) Republicans but don't register that way. We also know that the turnout model was critical just from what the public pollsters told us: that Christie had a huge lead (bigger than the win, by the way) with "definite" voters but the less likely voters brought Corzine closer.
Of course, at the end of the day, we don't know that Geller's polls were any better, when we recall we've never seen his numbers and I read between the lines. He invokes "insight we gained" which is rather different than 'results we measured' and when you read the article critically you'll notice there is no actual claim he did better. Still, I'd like to see what the public pollsters say about working off of voter lists instead of random digits. There doesn't seem to be much doubt that polling in New Jersey is more difficult than in some other states.
Just when you thought you were done with the polls, FDU is out with a poll that shows the Governor holding a slim two point lead over Chris Christie:
Polling over the past 11 days by Fairleigh Dickinson University's PublicMind™ shows that Democratic incumbent Jon Corzine and Republican challenger Chris Christie continued down to the wire in a close contest in the race for New Jersey governor. Reporting 1119 interviews of likely voters from Oct. 22 through Nov. 1 shows Corzine maintaining 43% support including leaners, against 41%, including leaners, for Christie, with 8% for independent Chris Daggett, 2% preferring other candidates, and 5% undecided, with a margin of error of +/- 3 percentage points.
This part of the poll memo confused me as they separated white women from the rest of women:
Democrats often have a significant advantage among women, offsetting a Republican advantage among men, but this year white women split evenly between Corzine and Christie (42-42) while white men prefer Christie by a large margin (55-29).
Does that mean that women and men who weren't white didn't help them make their point? They say that a majority of voters think that no matter what the numbers say now, Jon Corzine will be the Governor once again:
Nonetheless, more than half of voters (56%) say they think Corzine will win the election, against 28% who think that Christie will win. One percent say Daggett will win, and 15% say they don't know who will pull this one out.
Polls only matter if the people who participate actually go and vote. That's all we have left now is the ground game.
Following months of campaigning and after 86 polls since August 2008, the final pollster.com average shows Corzine 42%, Christie 42%, Daggett 10.1%:
I don't know if the race can get much closer than that. If ever people thought their vote didn't matter, now is the time to show them just how much it does.
In polling conducted over the final weekend of this campaign, the Monmouth University/Gannett New Jersey Poll finds the race is still in a statistical no man's land, but that incumbent Jon Corzine now appears to have a razor thin 43% to 41% lead over challenger Chris Christie. Independent Chris Daggett holds at 8%. This marks a slight, albeit statistically insignificant, shift from the 43% to 42% nominal lead Christie held in polling conducted from Wednesday through Friday.
"This race is still as close as it can be. It's possible that President Obama's visit boosted the governor's chances. But it is also likely that some anti-Corzine voters are still unsure of casting their lot with Christie. If the undecided vote breaks largely for the Republican, this race could be a squeaker," said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute.
There has been a significant push to get people voting early:
The poll also finds that about 6% of New Jersey voters have already cast their ballot by mail, similar to the percentage of mail ballots received in last year's presidential race. For these ballots, Jon Corzine looks to have the decided advantage. A majority of 53% of mail voters say they voted for the incumbent, compared to just 31% for Christie, 11% for Daggett and 5% for other candidates.
Here's what the poll said about people's feelings for the candidates:
The poll found that Jon Corzine's job performance rating stands at 36% approve to 54% disapprove, which is basically unchanged from prior polls. However, his personal rating has improved, now registering at 40% favorable to 44% unfavorable. While still in net negative territory, this is better than the 39% to 49% personal rating the governor had last week.
Chris Christie's personal rating is a net positive 40% favorable to 38% unfavorable. This is down slightly from last week's 44% to 36% rating. It is also down significantly from the 50% favorable to 26% unfavorable rating he held back in July.
Chris Daggett's personal rating remains steady at 21% favorable to 21% unfavorable, with the majority (58%) of likely voters saying they never really formed an opinion of the independent candidate.
The polls are all over the place. It's all going to come down to who we get out to vote. Voters can find their polling place here. The site allows you to get an email/phone reminder when you want to vote and then gives you 5 neighbors who vote at the same polling place that you can call and remind to vote. You can even make calls from home on behalf of the Governor if you can't make it to a location to volunteer. If you want to volunteer but aren't sure where to help, you can call 877-NJ-GOV-09 and they will route you to the nearest office to get involved.
A couple of weeks back, I asked if Christie was choking down the homestretch as the double digit leads were evaporating as summer turned to fall and attention started being paid to this race. And while there was plenty of blame to go around - the numerous "drip drip drip" Christie scandals, the continued lack of a plan for anything, the belligerent tone in ads or on television appearances, the hammering he was getting from Daggett, Corzine, Democrats, conservatives and people who were starting to take notice, not to mention his blaming others for running what has been called "the worst campaign ever" - things never really got on track.
But now, it seems like Christie has gone into full "freak out" mode as some polls are starting to show Corzine opening up a lead or being within the margin of error.
He has re-opened the "wrong way Christie" story by saying that he wasn't going the wrong way down a one way street - essentially calling the officer a liar. After talking about how this race was not about "outsiders", he has had republican "superstars" (read: has beens and never will bes) Bobby Jindal, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani ad Tim Pawlenty campaign for him. There will be a teabagger rally (with him possibly there) since he will be less than a mile away with Joe "You Lie" Wilson.
He hasn't talked much at all about the "tax issue" that has fallen into his campaign's lap but chooses to spend the final week talking about how fat he is (his words, not mine).
And yesterday, he told a caller on 101.5 that he wasn't dead set against project labor agreements when he was asked directly, even though his website and prior comments have gone so far as to call them an "inexcusable amount of waste".
At the end of a campaign, a confident candidate or a candidate running a solid campaign would be hammering home the theme and message in a powerful closing argument. The problem with Christie all along is that he had no real message, he had no self control, ownership in his campaign or discipline and he had no real campaign theme.
Those are the last traits that you want to have or have portrayed in the days before a huge election. And for someone who has been accused of running a putrid campaign - it is amazing that he is ending it on an even worse note than he has been running it for the past few months.
Pollster Patrick Murray of Monmouth University has written about this before, and I've quoted it before, but it's still worthwhile to remind ourselves, as Murray does today, that registered "unaffliated" voters are not the same as "independent" voters. About 45% of New Jersey registered voters are not registered with a major party but that doesn't mean 45% of voters are independents.
There are two key facts that mean that the percentage of registered "unaffiliated" voters are larger than the actual vote by "independents."
1. Many people who are registered "unaffiliated" consider themselves Democrats or Republicans:
Being "unaffiliated" in one's registration is not the same as being "independent" in one's thinking. We consistently find that at least 1-in-5 unaffiliated New Jersey voters actually see themselves as partisan.
This is a byproduct of New Jersey's semi-open primary system. Why bother registering with a party if you can wait until primary day and do it on the spot? And why bother to vote in primaries if they are rarely competitive? So, New Jersey ends up with a lot of "party-line" voters who never bother to register with their preferred party. They just see no need.
2. Registered unaffiliated voters are less likely to actually vote:
Last year, unaffiliated voters made up 38% of the electorate even though they comprised 47% of registered voters. In other words, while more than 8-in-10 registered Republican and Democratic voters showed up last November, only 6-in-10 unaffiliated voters turned out.
This disparity is even larger in non-presidential years (i.e. like this year). In the 2006 election for U.S. Senate, about 7-in-10 registered partisans showed up, but only 1-in-3 unaffiliateds did. And that was when unaffiliated voters made up 58% of the voter rolls. My guess is that many of those folks probably voted in the 2008 presidential primary and are now registered with a party. Therefore, I wouldn't be surprised if the unaffiliated turnout is even lower this year.
We'll see if he's right in a few weeks, but the former chairman of the DNC has made his prediction:
The ever-confident former Democratic National Chairman Terry McAuliffe predicted on Sunday that Democrats will win the gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia, where he lost the primary to Creigh Deeds.
Appearing on "Fox News Sunday," McAuliffe even put a number on New Jersey: Gov. Jon Corzine by 7 points.
I don't think it's all that surprising that he's picking the Democrats. Pollster.com has it about as close as you can get when you average everything out there. They have Christie leading Corzine 39.9 to 39.8:
Pollster Tom Jensen of PPP has an interesting post asking "Will Daggett hold his support?" He decided to check how similar candidates did in other states:
Polls released this week, three weeks before the election, have shown Daggett at an average of 14%. I decided to look at all the independent or third party candidates who have received at least 5% of the vote in a Gubernatorial contest since 2006 and see where they were polling roughly three weeks prior to election day and how that compared to their final share of the vote.
You can look at his compilation of poll data and election results, but the conclusion is:
With the exception of Kinky Friedman none of the candidates did more than a point worse than they were doing in the polls three weeks before the election. On average they even did a little more than a point better.
In another post he argues that if Daggett's voters abandon him, it's only worth a point or so. That, however, is about the size of Christie's lead today.
A New York Times poll released this morning has Democratic Governor Jon Corzine leading Republican Chris Christie by a 40-37% margin among likely voters. While Corzine's lead is within the margin of error, the results represent good news for the incumbent, who is seeking re-election in the most difficult political environment faced by a Democrat since 1993. One should exercise caution before popping the bubbly, however, for the Times notes:
... the decision facing New Jersey voters is startlingly bleak, the poll found. They do not like Mr. Corzine, think he has done a poor job and have little faith that he will revive the state's ailing economy or gain control of soaring property taxes, the two issues they say they care about the most.
Poll respondents did not like Chris Christie either. Predictably, the Corzine campaign's negative advertisements have driven up the former U.S. Attorney's unfavorable numbers, a negative compounded by press attention on his lack of a specific plan to solve New Jersey's economic woes. Disappointing to those familiar with the Governor's work to clean up the state's fiscal mess is that most people are unaware of the Corzine Administration's accomplishments in this area. 56% of respondents disapprove of the way the Governor has handled the economy, and perhaps more disturbing, a full 72% disapprove of the way he has dealt with property taxes. As the Times elaborated:
Economic issues have New Jerseyans near despair, the survey showed. About three-quarters of those polled rated the state's economy as fairly bad or very bad, the worst rating since the question was first asked in 1993. As many say it is hard to keep up with their bills. Four of five think the economy is staying the same or getting worse. Seven in 10 worry that a member of their household will be out of work in the next year.
The poll may be good news for Governor Corzine, whose campaign has been relentless in its attacks on Christie. However, with less than three weeks until Election Day, voters remain unaware of the Governor's accomplishments. Today's poll illustrates the benefits of going negative, but as New Jerseyans indicate they are choosing between the lesser of two evils, it's time the Governor's campaign focused more on the achievements of the last four years and his vision for the next.
The poll states, "As he faced a withering assault from Corzine and independent groups over the issue of insurance coverage of mammograms, Christie has lost significant ground with women, especially independent women. He now posts a net favorability rating of - 19 with women, down from - 7 two weeks ago. Among independent women, the drop is even more pronounced: from - 7 two weeks ago to - 34 today, with half the independent women giving him an unfavorable rating. This has clearly benefited Corzine in the vote as the governor now leads among women by 14 points, up from 6 points two weeks ago.''
And that's why Christie changed his website to remove the word mandate-free and why they're trying to push back so forecfully. Because their position is very unpopular and causing women to flee. Here is the trend of all the recent polls from Pollster.com, which now shows the race as an average less than 1 point lead for Christie if you put it on the high sensitivity:
Pollster.com keeps track averaging all the polls including the Quinnipiac, Monmouth University and Dkos/Research 2000 polls that came out this week and continued to show a tightening in the race. Here is a visual look at the trends:I'll put all the polls that create the visual below the fold. Pollster.com is a pretty good site if you're into tracking public opinion. The final poll of the voters will be taken at the ballot box one month from today. That's really the only one that counts.
We're going to be polling New Jersey end of next week, suggestions for questions are welcome. With the election so close anything we're going to ask needs to be focused specifically on the Governor's race or politics in the state (no Anti-Christ questions!)
You cam head over to their blog and leave your suggestions.
