SUSA poll: Christie ahead, or Halloween/Baseball effect?

by: Hopeful

Mon Nov 02, 2009 at 01:32:32 PM EST

On Election Eve in New Jersey, with a New York City team and a Philadelphia team in the World Series, Republican Chris Christie may have slight late momentum in his bid to unseat incumbent Democrat Jon Corzine, according to a SurveyUSA tracking poll conducted for WABC-TV. The candidates remain today within the theoretical margin of sampling error, as they have been in each of SurveyUSA's 5 tracking NJ polls. At the wire, Christie 45%, Corzine 42%. Interviews were conducted Friday 10/30/09 through Sunday 11/01/09. On 2 of the 3 nights, much of NJ was home watching local teams play in the World Series. And: 1 of the 3 nights was Halloween, when families with children are home in uniquely large numbers. As such, results of this survey should be interpreted cautiously: a narrow Corzine victory is not inconsistent with the data, but a narrow Christie win is more consistent with the data.

That last point is important because the margin of error is estimated to be 4.1%. Subgroups will be worse. SUSA continues to find that Corzine is leading the Vote By Mail group:

Those who have already voted favor Corzine. Corzine has votes banked. For Christie to be elected, he needs the voters who talk the Christie talk to walk the Christie walk on Election Day. The smaller the Election Day turnout, the more important Corzine's banked votes are. The larger the Election Day turnout, the more likely the Republicans are to take Trenton. On the other hand: President Obama campaigned for Corzine on Sunday. Most interviews for this survey were completed before TV accounts of the Obama visit were shown, and 100% of interviews were completed before Monday's newspapers were published with photos of Obama and Corzine.

The poll has 582 likely voters (out of 1000 adults.)  Corzine leads with women and Christie leads with men. Christie seems to be increasing with independent voters, which he obviously needs to do with so many more Democrats than Republicans.