When you think of pollsters in New Jersey, one of the first names that comes to mind is Patrick Murray of Monmouth University. Yet, even an iconic figure like Murray has succumbed to the Tea Party propaganda. Check out this video snippet from his interview on NJ Today:
"Republican voters are against any tax hikes. Democratic voters are against any cost cuts."
The first part of Murray's statement is true, as we have seen with the so-called "super committee" and Governor Christie's justifying his double veto of the millionaire's tax based on the false assertion that it would drive wealthy people out of the state. But stating that Democratic voters are against cost cutting is just plain wrong and Murray should know better.
First, many Democrats are in favor of cutting the bloated defense and homeland security budgets, but have been stymied by the Republican minority. But even ignoring this obvious fact, Democrats have long been willing to compromise (some say too willing) on social programs to get the Republican votes they need to unjam the Senate filibusters that have been crippling our economy.
I can only assume that Murray has fallen victim to the biases about the economy that are pervasive within the mainstream corporate media.
Nothing like a dose of the truth to shine the light on the fact that the Emperor really wears no clothes.
1. New Jersey Loses Jobs: 13,000 of them according to the state DOL. So much for all those tax cuts to make NJ welcoming to business. So much for the Governor's veto of the Legislature's job creation bills.
2. Property Taxes Increase: A 2010 increase averaging about 4.1% vs. an average increase of about 3.5% in the years 2007 thru 2009. So let's see - the "tough budget" Governor Christie has increased property taxes more than that "wimpy budget" Governor Corzine. mmmmm?
3. The Straight Talking Governor: apparently doesn't always talk so "straight and honest" - read the New York Times article unmasking Governor Blunt Speaking who seems to embellish the truth just a little.
Posted this overnight, when sensible people were asleep. So, I'm pulling it back up because I think it's significant. And because we had it first.
America is supposed to be in the throws of a widespread anti-Democratic mood, as doomsday stories of Obama's first mid-term election - particularly post-spill - and the pull of history whisper daily.
But there's a window of chance that in New Jersey's 7th congressional district such tendencies are instead manifesting themselves as a broader anti-incumbent mood, that incumbent being the GOP's Leonard Lance. Some real lack of enthusiasm among the very voters he should be counting on most. In his Primary, Lance had a record three Tea Party challengers charge at him from the right. And he won with the lowest percentage of any incumbent in the New Jersey congressional delegation - 56%. In fact, none of Lance's three GOP primary challengers has even endorsed him since. And one of them - David Larsen - is still in contact with supporters encouraging them to "vote for conservatism, vote for change," though it isn't clear for whom that might be.
That might be the crack of an opening of a fighting chance for Ed Potosnak, the high school chemistry teacher who won a national Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator fellowship and went to Washington to work on policy with Rep. Mike Honda (D-CA). Potosnak, in his late thirties, is younger than Lance, but he's also a fresh, hard-worker with progressive bona fides in a district that had its heart broken a couple times.
In indicators of an incumbent's strength, Lance is soft. Just 31% of 7th CD voters want to see Leonard Lance reelected; 46% think it's time to make a change and elect someone else. Nosing into those numbers you find the squishiest appraisals of Lance. Republicans: 43% reelect, 39% make a change. Independents: 24% reelect, 47% make a change.
Potosnak still has low name-recognition: 12%. But the polling suggests NJ-7 is a restless district: Without naming the actual candidates, by nearly 3-1 (55%-19%), NJ-7 voters prefer electing "new people" over reelecting "current members of Congress." Ironically, it's Lance's own voters who are most pre-disposed to electing new people, by a nearly 6-1 margin. It may be possible that some of those voters still think of Lance as one of those "new people," but given the decades-long tenure in NJ politics before Congress, that's a stretch.
Yesterday’s Democratic Senate caucus meeting – combined with Majority Leader Reid’s push on this issue, combined with President Obama’s leadership, combined with a clear demand by the public for action – has given comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation a major boost as we head towards the 4th of July recess. Clearly, at this point, there’s a better path to 60 votes in the U.S. Senate for comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation than ever before. We are that close to making history, let’s make sure we seize this moment!
With all that in mind, a recent national survey by Al Quinlan of Greenburg Quinlan Rosner Research has potentially powerful implications for the 2010 elections, providing yet more evidence that climate legislation – despite a fallacious "mainstream media" narrative arguing otherwise – is actually good politics. The key findings are threefold (note: the document talks about strategy for the Democratic Party, but could apply to Republicans as well):
Small businesses “are among America’s most popular entities,” with an eye-popping 44:1 favorable to unfavorable ratio (“the highest we have ever seen in our polling on any topic”)
Generating support from small business owners, for either political party, is a key to success in the upcoming mid-term elections.
Small business owners strongly agree “that a move to clean energy will help restart the economy and lead to job creation by small businesses.” In fact, according to Greenburg Quinlan, “One of the most surprising findings of the survey is that despite the fact that nearly two thirds of business owners believe it would increase costs for their businesses, a majority still want to move forward on clean energy and climate policy.”
As if that’s not evidence enough that there’s broad support out there for comprehensive, clean energy and climate legislation, how about this Benenson Survey Group survey, conducted in late May/early June 2010? The key findings of this poll are:
65% of “likely 2010 voters” believe that “the federal government should invest much more than it currently invests [or] somewhat more than it currently invests.”
63% of “likely 2010 voters” support an energy bill that would “limit pollution, invest in domestic energy sources and encourage companies to use and develop clean energy…in part by charging energy companies for carbon pollution in electricity or fuels like gas.”
Among “undecided voters,” “62% support the bill and just 21% oppose.”
There is also strong evidence from this polling that voters – including independent voters by a 2.5:1 margin – are strongly inclined, by around a 2:1 margin, to be “more likely to re-elect” their Senator if he or she voted for a strong, comprehensive, clean energy and climate bill.
In sum, solid majorities of small businesspeople and the public at large both support comprehensive, clean energy and climate legislation. Which is why, once again – as we pointed out yesterday – the “mainstream media” narrative, that voting for limits on carbon pollution is bad politics, is just dead wrong. To the contrary, victory this November could go to the candidates – and the party – that seizes this issue and makes it their own. Ideally, it would be great to see both Republicans and Democrats fighting to be the “greenest” candidate, and not just in terms of how much money they raise.
UPDATE: Add another poll to the list, this one by WSJ-NBC indicating that “Respondents favored comprehensive energy and carbon pollution reduction legislation by 63 percent to 31 percent – a two to one margin.”
From the text of the Quinnipiac University poll, released this morning, showing Corzine gaining rapidly on Christie, now 43-39. Q-poll says:
"Christopher Christie is still ahead in the Garden State, but when he looks in the rear- view mirror, he sees the bearded visage of Gov. Jon Corzine getting closer," said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
Although ... we'd add, it's obvious that Christie doesn't look in the rearview mirror.
Or the sideview mirror, the windshield, speed limit signs or one way signs.
Bloomberg had a story looking at whether Governor Corzine is avoiding the backlash of the latest budget. They talked about the recently released Public Mind Poll and said this:
Sixty-four percent of voters said it was a good idea to raise taxes on wine and liquor, and 55 percent said they support Corzine's plan to scale back the property tax deduction on the state income tax. Fifty-two percent also said they support a wage freeze and unpaid leaves for state workers.
In an April 7 PublicMind poll, 72 percent said they would rather curb spending than raise taxes.
"I expected more backlash and I expected less support" for raising taxes, said Peter Woolley, director of PublicMind. "It goes to show you that people are happy to tax other people."
The Governor's people had to be happy seeing this story and these poll numbers considering everything that has been in the news and on the agenda lately. While the overall numbers haven't been desirable, some of the internal statistics can be looked on in a more positive light.
Two years ago today, New Jersey enacted a civil unions law by a wide margin. Compelled by the New Jersey Supreme Court to deliver full equality to same-sex families, the Legislature copped out and chose to demean thousands of New Jersey families (denying over a third of them equal rights like health benefits, hospital visitation, financial security, and more), because they were politically afraid to support marriage equality. A few legislators bravely spoke out in favor of true equality, realizing you cannot have Equality and Diet Equality, you can only have true equality or a sham.
Were some legislators justified in the political fears that led them to support civil unions over true equality? No.
A new poll, commissioned by Gannett (the news org that operates the APP, the Home News Tribune, the Courier Post, and other papers) shows that New Jersey voters support marriage equality 50%-40%.
Every time, there's been an excuse from legislators too politically afraid to stand up for what's right. But that's all they are: excuses. There are no excuses anymore. Gannett has no axe to grind here, no political agenda. And it is straight-up reporting that the voters of New Jersey respond favorably to marriage equality, based on credible and unbiased polling. If the poll is at all biased (which we doubt, as Monmouth University is a renowned, fair NJ pollster), it likely skews to the right. The numbers remain. A strong majority of New Jerseyans support marriage equality.
So, we're paging Steve Sweeney, Dick Codey, Diane Allen, and other members of the New Jersey State Senate who have appeared lukewarm or quiet on the issue of marriage equality. Senators, you have no more room for excuses. Fundamentally, you either support full equality or you don't; you must either stand up for what's right or cave in to baseless political fear and timidity. New Jerseys same-sex families have suffered because of civil unions; that's not in doubt. You can either recognize that suffering and fix it by enacting marriage equality this year, or you can turn a blind eye.
The truth is, there are no half-assed attempts at equality. It's time for members of the New Jersey Senate to stand up and be counted, and it's time for members of the Blue Jersey community to turn up the heat and call these wavering senators today.
As has already been noted, Monmouth University's latest poll has Linda Stender trailing Leonard Lance, 43-39 among likely voters and 41-37 among registered voters. With less than a month to go, that isn't good news - but it isn't necessarily bad news, either.
The poll also has some encouraging news - if the Stender campaign knows how to capitalize on it. For instance, among likely voters, Obama leads McCain by a single point(47-46), with 7% undecided. If nothing else, that shows that a Democrat can win the district. The problem is that Lance loses only 4% of those likely voters, while Stender loses 8%, with 14% undecided.
The problem for Stender, then, is that she needs to give Obama voters a reason to stick with the Democratic line. This will be helped somewhat by having Frank Lautenberg - though his near-absent campaign doesn't help the coattails flow nearly as long as they would if he actually, you know, ran a campaign or something. But Dick Zimmer has the attraction of a big ball of poop in a bowl of rice. If you like that sort of thing, it's yummy - but most people are not going to go out of their way to swallow it.
This week's poll from Q-pac has Barack Obama holding onto a slender three point lead over John McCain. Could it really be that close? Probably not - at least not by the time we get to November.
Take a look at the following chart where I compare September polling at Q-pac to actual results:
Year
Leader
Margin
Undecided
Final Margin
2008
Obama
3
6
???
2006
Kean
3
6
8
2005
Corzine
4
8
9
2004
Kerry
4
6
7
2002
Torricelli
4
14
10
If you notice, there's a pretty consistent pattern - at this point, the leader averages roughly 3.5 points ahead with an average of 7 points worth of undecided voters (I'm going to ignore Torricelli's 14 point undecideds as an outlier). The only thing we have to note is that in 2006, Tom Kean, Jr actually turned a three point lead into an eight point deficit. Wow. That is quite the accomplishment.
PublicMind of FDU has a new poll out today. It shows Barack Obama leading John McCain 47-41 with 11% unsure and 2% backing neither candidate. This represents a "tightening" of the race from their last poll in June when Obama led McCain 49-33. However, as I noted yesterday:
As of August 13, McCain was trailing by ten points in New Jersey - and new voters are always under represented in polling. By way of comparison, Tom Kean, Jr was slightly ahead of Sen. Robert Menendez around this time in 2006. Forrester was down by only four points in 2005. And Forrester was actually four points ahead of Robert Torricelli in 2002.
If you want to read more about this, make the jump.
Any illusions that Dick Zimmer (who?) would be competitive with Frank Lautenberg can be easily dashed by looking at the Quinnipiac polling report. This year's race is practically an afterthought in the focus on a hypothetical match-up between Jon Corzine and Chris Christie. But let's get this year completed before we look ahead.
Among registered voters, Lautenberg leads Zimmer by eight - down one point from two months ago. Lautenberg's support dropped two points - which is far from significant, but interesting only because it is twice the decline in support that Zimmer saw. Registered voters were most likely to be moving to the "Don't Know" column than anything else.
In the smaller realm of "likely voters", Lautenberg's lead holds at seven points, 48 to 41. It's purely a numbers game here. Lautenberg has support of 78 percent of Democrats and Zimmer has support of 80 percent of Republicans. Zimmer even leads among Indies - 44 to 42. But builk numbers lean towards the Dems, so FRL picks up a return to DC.
Quinnipiac University has new poll numbers out - and they show bad news for Governor Jon Corzine. But first, some numbers of interest for the Senatorial race (what? We have a Senatorial race? Really?)
If the election were held today, Frank Lautenberg would win 47-38 over Dick Zimmer - and I think that margin may even increase in the next five months. Right now, Zimmer is basically unknown, with sixty-seven percent of respondents saying they don't know enough about him to have an opinion. That includes fifty-six percent of Republicans, who just picked this guy in their primary. Even more amazing is that twenty-six percent of the electorate doesn't know enough about Jon Corzine to have an opinion - including twenty-nine percent of Democrats.
The good news for Jon Corzine is that only eleven percent of people don't know if they like him or not. It's all bad news from there, though.
Rasmussen polling just released a poll that has Obama ahead of McCain in New Jersey by a measure of 48-39, with 6% going for an unnamed third-party candidate and another 6% undecided.
The report continues:
The new survey -- conducted 24 hours after Obama achieved the number of delegates necessary for the nomination -- found McCain being backed by 83% of Republicans while 78% of Democrats pledged themselves to Obama.
The big surprise is found down at the bottom:
Just 23% of New Jersey voters say President Bush is doing a good or an excellent job. Fifty-two percent (52%) say he's doing a poor job.
Seriously - who are these people that think Bush is great and what does he have to do to change their minds? I recently heard a political operative say, "Your base are the people who stay with you when you are wrong." I really don't understand that - because if someone is wrong, I'm going to be one of the first saying so - but it would seem that there should be some limit to what people can call "excellent". Isn't there?
The Philadelphia Inquirer editorial board has usually been on the leading edge of most issues. So it's sad to see that when it comes to civil rights for same-sex couples in New Jersey, they are complacent with a failed status quo and lining up on the wrong side of history:
But with poll after poll showing that New Jersey residents are not ready to accept gay marriage, it would be more destructive to that movement were it to attempt to force the issue at this time.
I completely disagree with their interpretation of what the polls really show. All recent polling data I could find is at the end of this post, and you can decide for yourself. But the larger point is that polls haven't and shouldn't determine whether or not our country extends civil rights to all.
If we had waited until polls showed overwhelming numbers before enacting civil rights laws, our country would probably be a very different place today.
In 1948, Harry Truman proposed civil rights legislation to desegregate the military, make lynching a federal crime, and end the use of poll taxes to disenfranchise poor blacks. A March 1948 Gallup poll found "deep ambivalence" among the 63% who had heard of the program. "A third (33%) said the whole program should be passed, while 31% said it should not, and 34% would not offer an opinion on the matter."
Truman faced opposition at election time even from within his own party.
This provoked a firestorm of criticism from Southern Democrats in the time leading up to the national nominating convention, but Truman refused to compromise, saying "My forbears were Confederates... But my very stomach turned over when I learned that Negro soldiers, just back from overseas, were being dumped out of army trucks in Mississippi and beaten."
That's quite a contrast to the timidity of some of our candidates (and their supporters) today who are paralyzed by fear of doing anything brave during election season.
The public was also timid during the civil rights era. In a June, 1961 Gallup poll [The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, page 237] where respondents were asked if integration "should be brought about gradually" or if "every means should be used to bring it about in the near future", 61% said gradually while only 23% said it should happen soon.
The echoes of the past still haunt us today. Our 'progressive' governor thinks we should drag our feet a bit more before providing equality. "It's my own view that that's where our society is at this moment in time," he says.
The proposed Civil Rights Act also did not have overwhelming popular support. A June 1963 Gallup poll identified a "mixed reaction to the idea of racial equality in public places, with a slight plurality (49%) in favor, compared to 42% opposed."
It wasn't until after the legislation passed that support grew significantly. In two polls conducted in September and October of 1964, the public approved of the legislation by 2-1, about 60% to 30%.
Most recent polling in New Jersey (see table below) shows either a plurality or majority support for extending marriage rights to same-sex couples.
We don't need to wait for utopian poll numbers before acting. Because the challenge we're facing today isn't harder than any past battle for equality. We need brave leaders who understand the promise of America. And we need those too timid to join the fight to step aside, or risk standing on the wrong side of history.
The latest Monmouth University poll has Senator Hillary Clinton leading Barack Obama 50% - 36%. Still, 14% of voters are undecided.
Contrary to other polls, this one shows Clinton widening her lead over Obama compared to the previous Monmouth poll which had Clinton ahead by 12 points on January 13th (42% - 30%).
It may be possible that the earlier Monmouth poll was off, since other polls conducted that same week had Clinton ahead by 18% (Rasmussen, 1/15) and 25% (Research 2000, 1/10).
New Jersey voters chose Senator Hillary Clinton as the candidate they?d be the most likely and most unlikely to support in the general election, according to a new study from Fairleigh Dickinson University?s PublicMind. In a survey conducted from January 14 through January 20, likely primary voters, regardless of party affiliation, were asked who among the field of candidates they are most likely and most unlikely to support for president. Clinton tops both lists with 25 and 27 percent, respectively.
Wow. It would seem that for every person who really wants to vote for Hillary there is someone waiting to vote for ANYONE else. What a great candidate! Jump with me for more insights.
I don't trust FDU polls much since they always seem to have outlying numbers. But their latest poll released this morning (Kean 43%, Menendez 39%) has a result which every Congressional candidate in the state and nationwide should take very seriously:
National issues seem to be having a substantial impact on New Jerseyans' votes in Congressional races as well. Overall, 38% of voters say they intend to vote for the Democratic candidate for the House of Representatives and 28% intend to vote for the Republican candidate in their local House election. However, among those voters who were asked about Bush and Iraq before questions about the Congress, Democratic candidates have an 18 point advantage, 41 to 23. For those who were not asked questions about national issues first, Democratic House candidates led by only two points, 35 to 33 percent.
Bush isn't even running this year, but he's got some giant reverse coattails. It's up to campaigns to remind voters that Republicans were complicit in this administration's failed policies and have acted (and will continue to act) irresponsibly in their unwillingness to hold the President accountable.
I'm back from the four-day AAPOR (American Association for Public Opinion Research) Conference in Montreal with a lot of information to digest. Polling is one of those sciences people love when it bolsters their opinions, and hate when it contradicts them. However, since the 2004 election cycle, many have attempted to discredit the use of polling in the political arena with the claim that it is not a science at all.
