Friday, August 14, 2009

Ragin Cajun Poll

James Carville's company, Democracy Corps, commissioned a poll that indicates that Chris Christie in leading Jon Corzine in the gubernatorial race by 5%, 40-35, with Independent Chris Daggett at 10%. The poll has a margin of error of +/- 4.1%.

Given that the recent independent polls, Quinnipiac, Monmouth/Gannett, and Rasmussen have had Christie at over 50%, it would be easy to dismiss this poll. Daggett gets 10% of the vote with only 18% name recognition? That is hard to believe.

Question 20 of the poll is very interesting. The pollster asked the voters if they consider themselves conservative, moderate or liberal, in political terms. Surprisingly to me, 19% identified themselves as liberal, 41% as moderate and 35% as conservative. With those numbers, New Jersey should be a Red State. Yet, we consistently vote Democratic.

On the question of partisanship, 24% identified themselves as strong Democrat, 13% weak Democrat and 9% Independent-lean Democrat. 16% said they were strong Republican, 11% weak Republican and 10% Independent-lean Republican. 15% said they are Independent.

These numbers would seem to indicate that moderates identify more with the Democratic Party than the Republican Party by a significant margin and that conservatives are not wed to the Republicans.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

How did Steve Lonegan, the Republican, do in this poll?

Anonymous said...

yup, and once again, therein lies our NJ-rub:we defeat ourselves consistently: it is WAY not over, gang!.. he's got 20 or 30 mil more to blow on this race, we've got annoying volunteer phone calls..so, let's step up the rhetoric, we just gotta have new blood in that chair!.. Virginia's doing well, we can't be a national embarassment in Nov., and a messed-up win for Nobama and his band of socialists!

Anonymous said...

What's interesting is that Corzine only gets about35% support in the internal Dem poll or the independent polls.

DavidE said...

Democracy Corps doesn't have a record of bias in its polls. (unlike the CBS/NY Times polls) Look at their recent generic Congressional vote or their polls during the last Presidential election.

A lot of the difference in the polls depends on assumptions of the pollster on who votes and how the pollster does the weightings for the polls.

The most important thing about the polls is that they all show Christie leading outside the margins of the poll and all show Christie with huge leads among independents.