| In this diary, I will look at each county's results and either explain why Christie or Corzine won x % of the vote there, how that county's result contributed to the final results and/or what these results mean for the county's future voting habits.
First, some information about New Jersey statewide and some helpful links:
It was a pretty sad result when Christie beat Corzine 49%-45% with Daggett winning most of the remaining 6%. It looks like Charlie Brown finally kicked the football in New Jersey. Corzine also learned that running ads criticizing your opponent's weight does NOT gain voters and that the candidate who campaigns on lower taxes does well with upper income white independents. On average, Corzine won 12 points less than Obama and the margin between 2008 and 2009 shifted towards the Republicans by 19 points. Corzine did not lose much ground among minority voters but Obama performed much better among independent white voters. My next diary, this time analyzing Urban and Northern New Jersey should be up soon. The counties I designated for each region are Burlington, Ocean Counties and all the counties south of them for Southern New Jersey. The counties in Central NJ are Monmouth, Mercer, Hunterdon, Somerset and Middlesex. I will make many references to my post called "what to watch for during election night" which I posted a week and a half before November 3rd (when Daggett was polling in the teens) so I highly recommend reading it first. The link is here:
http://frogandturtle.blogspot....
: http://uselectionatlas.org/RES...
This other link is for Presidential election results in 2008. Once you click the link, go to the icon choose another office, select gubernatorial races, select a year and you should find yourself a map. Yes, the maps here have red for Democrats and blue for Republicans.
http://quickfacts.census.gov/q...
this is for New Jersey's demographic data. Click on a county and you will find the data for each county.
Southern New Jersey
In my post on what to watch for on election night, I said that even if Corzine barely won, he should still lose Southern New Jersey. Corzine lost and he definitely lost Southern New Jersey. Camden County is the most urban county in Southern New Jersey and Obama won 67% of the vote there in 2008. I said that Corzine needed to win by at least 15 points to win. Corzine barely missed, winning by 14 points. This explains that Christie was able to win white middle class independents but Christie lost Camden County because of heavily Democratic Camden City and its close suburbs. In my last post, I said that if Corzine won Gloucester County, he was successful with winning white voters in Camden County. Christie won Gloucester County by three points so Christie's success among the Camden County suburban voter was widespread. Gloucester County has the same demographics as Camden County without the inner city. I found heavily white and rural Salem County's result unexpected. Christie won by six points and since the county narrowly voted for Obama, I would have expected a larger Christie win. The answer to this question could be that Daggett peeled away enough Christie voters to narrow the margin. Daggett won 10% of the vote in Salem.
Another interesting result is Cape May County where Obama won 45% of the vote but Corzine won 38%, higher than counties with similar counties on the Jersey Shore. This could be because Kim Guadango, Christie's running mate helped him in Monmouth and Ocean Counties further north but not at Cape May. Corzine won Cumberland County 50%-42% winning ten points less than Obama. I expected a smaller drop here due to large numbers of minority voters.
As in past elections, Atlantic County was the complete bellwether in the race as it was in 2000, 2004, 2005 and 2008. Christie won 49% of the vote and only 0.05% less than his statewide average, 48.75%. Atlantic County's population is 61% White, one point less than New Jersey's 62% White population. Atlantic County culturally may be closer to Las Vegas on the beach than the rest of New Jersey but Atlantic County has a close proportion to the rest of New Jersey of urban, suburban and rural areas. Ocean County just to Atlantic County's north voted for Christie by 38 points and the increase over McCain's margin in 2008 was only a bit above the average increase. The important point is the turnout which is about 2/3 the level of 2008, showing that Christie was able to turn out the base. Another important county was Burlington County which usually votes 1-2 points more Democratic than New Jersey and has similar demographics to Camden County. Christie won Burlington County by two points showing his narrow margin among the demographic of southwestern New Jersey white voters. Overall, Southern New Jersey voted similar to what I expected.
Central New Jersey:
Christie received large margins here, losing only one county. Christie lost Mercer County which contains heavily Democratic Trenton by only 16 points, 19 points less than Obama. Most of the voting was polarized with Christie gaining more than average over McCain while Christie gained less in heavily Democratic areas. Mercer County was a different story because even though it was a base county, the base did not turn out and Christie made inroads among the white voters here. In Monmouth County on the Shore, Christie's running Kim Guadango who is from Monmouth County definitely helped him there. Obama lost Monmouth County by three points even though it is an upper class county that is 77% White. Christie won by 31 points, improving over McCain's margin by 28 points. The large increase is probably due to not only Guadango but also that Daggett was unable to garner enough votes. He won only 6% of the vote and I expected the Shore would be a strong area for Daggett. If Daggett stayed strong and won somewhere around 15% of the vote, he probably would have reduced Christie 64,000 vote margin in Monmouth County by about 15,000. Another reason for Monmouth County's strong Christie result is that the suburban white voters in New York/New Jersey are trending towards the Republicans. As long as the Republicans stay away from cultural issues, they can start winning these voters again. Also, 9/11 was a factor for voters in Monmouth County which lost many residents due to the attack. If Democrats want to win a majority of white suburban voters in New York/New Jersey, they need to clearly highlight how they will save those voters' jobs or create some for them but it will be hard to gain voters who vote Republican because of 9/11.
Moving onto Hunterdon County, Christie won there by 40 points, 27 points higher than McCain's 13 point margin. Hunterdon County has wealthy independents and the large shift towards Christie is probably because Obama over performed with wealthy independents and they are reverting back to their normal voting patterns. Also, many of the wealthy voters may have trusted Wall Street but felt betrayed because they believed a former Wall Street corporate executive could not fix their economy. Somerset County is less Republican but contains many of the same voters as Hunterdon County. When I saw the Middlesex County result, I was pretty shocked. Obama won there by 22 points but Christie won by three. Middlesex County was not extremely white; its population was 53% White. Most of the minorities were Hispanic or Asians but Christie did not appear to make inroads among Hispajnics. His website did not even have a Spanish version while Corzine's did. My explanation would be that Corzine failed to turn out the base and Christie did extremely well with white independents. Another possibility is that Christie made inroads among some moderate Asian groups.
Overall, in Southern and Central New Jersey, Christie and Guandango's homes helped them win voters while sweeping independents and preventing Corzine from turning out his base. |
.gif)
