Myth busting in NJ
Myth Number 1: Democrats always finish strong in New Jersey Of course, I’ve been saying for a while now that I thought this was due to a bandwagon effect. Democrats have never run anyone as unpopular as Jon Corzine – and I’m willing to bet they won’t do it again any time soon. Because Democrats do not always finish strong in New Jersey.
Myth Number 2: A vote for Daggett hurts Christie: Obviously, this isn’t true when Christie wins. If anything, Daggett hurt Corzine because if Corzine would have gotten all of the votes that went to Daggett, he would have won. Of course, Corzine never would have gotten all of the votes Daggett got. What Daggett did, as far as I can tell, is give Democrats an alternative. If he hadn’t been in the race, then it’s likely a good number of his supporters would have just stayed home – like so the majority of voters.
Myth Number 3: Record low turnout doomed Corzine A major caveat – the Division of Elections doesn’t have the official results up yet for several counties. But The Record has some pretty telling unofficial results giving Corzine 1,026,899 votes and Christie 1,132,689 votes. Last night, they received 2,158,588 votes (without all of the votes counted). In 2005, the two major candidates accounted for a total of 2,209,822 votes. I would expect that, by the time all of the votes are counted, the vote totals will be very similar.
Now, to deal with the meat of the myth, low turnout generally aids an incumbent. This is especially true in New Jersey when the incumbent is a Democrat, because the vote machines in Hudson and Essex County can generally churn out a lot of votes.
Take a look at Hudson County. In 2005, Corzine received 87,409 votes to Doug Forrester’s 25,769. Last night, Corzine received only 76,145 and Christie received 29,301. Daggett, incidentally, received 3,639 votes in Hudson County. So Corzine lost 11,264 votes, whereas Republicans improved by 3,532. Combined with Daggett’s votes, we can account for more than seven thousand of the eleven thousand votes Corzine lost. Plus there are eight more precincts to be counted in Hudson. That won’t give us four thousand more votes, but it will probably account for at least half of them. Voter turnout, while a tad bit lower than in 2005 in Hudson County, doesn’t account for Corzine’s failure. Voters rejecting Corzine account for Corzine’s loss.
Myth Number 4: A conservative won in New Jersey I honestly can’t believe Tom Moran is saying something this ignorant. Especially when he writes this:
Christie dodged every big question during the campaign. His central promise was to get rid of Corzine. He calculated, correctly as it turned out, that for voters that was enough.So what’s next? Really, we have no idea. Christie is an absolute wild card.
If he’s a wild card, then he’s no “unapologetic conservative.” Further, when asked point blank if he was a moderate or conservative by CNN’s Wolfe Blitzer, Christie refused to say. In fact, he said those labels are meaningless in New Jersey. Here’s the video (thanks to Rosi Efthim at Blue Jersey for catching it):
This is what Paul Mulshine had to say:
The winner last night, Republican Chris Christie, managed to get through the entire campaign without taking a single principled stand on a single issue. He was against waste, fraud and abuse. He was against corruption. He was in favor of tax cuts. And that was about it.
Even if you take Christie’s supposed conservative stands, he backed off of them at the first push. His promise to cut sales taxes? Gone. His promise to eliminate business tax surcharges? Gone. His promise to cut taxes across the board? Gone. Even his promise to repeal insurance mandates backfired so badly that he even spent money to air an ad claiming that he wouldn’t really repeal all of the mandates.
Christie may not be liberal, but he isn’t conservative, either. If anything, he’s absolutely bereft of ideological guidance, simply depending on the public to tell him which way to twist.
Myth Number 5: This election has national implications The only national implication for this campaign was the neither Barack Obama nor Bill Clinton could make people like Jon Corzine. But the help from national Democrats came late and…get this…Chris Christie’s commercial featuring Barack Obama was probably as effective as the two Presidents’ visits.
Jon Corzine was not voted out because of Iraq or Afghanistan. He was not voted out because of the AIG bailout or the GM bailout. He was not voted out because of the health care debate. He was voted out because: 1) Taxes are too high; and 2) He was soft on corruption. That’s it. That’s why Christie’s campaign didn’t need specifics. He just had to say, “Taxes high. Corruption bad.” And it didn’t hurt that the July FBI sting kept corruption in the headlines (though it didn’t necessarily make him a shoe-in, either).
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