Election Day 2009
Election Day 2009 Analysis
Ben Dworkin
Director of the Rebovich Institute for NJ Politics at Rider University
These comments are for public use, so long as there is appropriate attribution.
Referendum Vs. Choice
Chris Christie successfully framed the debate as a referendum on Jon Corzine. The Governor spent millions of dollars trying to convince voters that this election was more of a choice and that Christie was a less desirable alternative. He was unsuccessful.
The Numbers
Just because New Jersey is a blue state doesn’t mean there isn’t a Republican Party here as well.
The bottom line: Democratic areas under-performed and Republican areas over-performed; that is, Republican counties did vastly better than one might have expected.
Ocean County is a good example of Republican over-performance. It provided an astonishing 70,000 vote plurality for Christie. Four years ago, this same county gave Doug Forrester a little under 22,000 vote margin. When one county bumps its margins by nearly 50,000 votes, all the old election models can get thrown out the window. Today, we saw an amazing surge in Republican support in the shore area.
Teaneck, the biggest Democratic town in Bergen County, and hometown of Democratic Loretta Weinberg, is a good example of Democratic underperformance. Democrats should have won by at least 7,600 votes and instead won by only 6,500. It was a metaphor for what was happening all across the state.
The Campaign
The Christie campaign made a choice to avoid being too specific when it came to explaining how he would handle the state’s fiscal crisis. He never really went beyond a promise to cut government. Over the years, candidates from both sides of the aisles have used this political strategy successfully.
I’ve suggested that, in 2009, in the middle of the biggest recession of the last 60 years, voters might reject vagueness and demand more substance from their elected leaders. Tonight, it looks like I was wrong. The desire for change was clearly more important than any specifics a campaign might have offered. That doesn’t mean that the voters are wrong or even misguided. But one should not expect anything different in future campaigns since obviously the strategy continues to work.
One of the surprises on this election day is that despite the obvious voter dissatisfaction with Corzine and such a strong Christie win, the Republicans only picked up one Assembly seat. This might be considered an opportunity that got away for the Republicans.
The Candidates
Fundamentally, Jon Corzine was never able to articulate his accomplishments in a way that resonated with voters. That left him at a severe disadvantage. He was able to drive up Christie’s negatives, but never moved beyond 40% approval for himself. This undermined the massive GOTV effort mounted by the Democrats. It is hard to be effective with your GOTV if your candidate is not well liked. When you’re not selling a popular product, no number of “boots on the ground” is likely to overcome that.
Chris Christie’s victory speech mentioned the word “hope” about a half-dozen times. This is interesting because he has now taken both parts of the Obama message. Previously, he only talked about “change.”
The National Implications
The surge in GOP votes from Monmouth and Ocean have to be examined more closely. Perhaps there is some “send Obama a message” going on there.
But, for the most part, this is a state race whose outcome was determined largely by state issues framed by an unpopular incumbent.
Nationally, this election will be seen as a referendum on Obama. It will become a self-fulfilling prophecy, even if it is not grounded in reality. Because of what happened tonight – and in Virginia – the national Republicans will be able to raise more money and recruit better candidates to run for Congress in 2010.
New Jersey’s race for governor will have national implications, but not by design, just by interpretation.
The Future
Everyone will play nice and will reach across the aisle, but I think we are eventually going to see some real difficulties between the Democratic-controlled legislature and the Republican governor.
It’s a huge opportunity for Christie to lead by using the bully pulpit of the Governor’s office. Jon Corzine only rarely took on the legislature this way.
Politically, there will be a lot of positioning as both sides prepare for the mid-term elections in two years when both houses of the legislature will be up. Before then, there is a legislative redistricting process which can completely re-shape the political landscape.
It will be interesting to see how Christie sets out to re-shape the state’s Supreme Court with a more like-minded conservative ideology.
What To Watch For When The Polls Close – And Why
Election Day – 6:25 p.m.
In the last 18 statewide elections in New Jersey (President, U.S. Senate and Governor), Democrats have won 16 of them. Only Christine Todd Whitman’s two successful runs for governor in 1993 and 1997 halted a complete Democratic sweep since 1989.
How did she do it? One answer is that Whitman got big wins in the counties of Morris, Somerset, Monmouth and Ocean -- traditional Republican areas. At the same time, her Democratic opponents (incumbent Gov. Jim Florio in 1993 and challenger – and later Governor – Jim McGreevey in 1997) rolled up huge pluralities in key Democratic counties like Essex, Hudson and Camden.
In 2009, these counties are all expected to again deliver big margins for either Corzine or Christie.
Whitman also won because of her strong efforts in three, large swing counties: Bergen, Union and Middlesex.
Four years ago, Democrat Jon Corzine won these three counties by more than 94,000 votes. But in 1993 – which is probably the most appropriate comparison because there too we had an unpopular, Democratic incumbent governor seeking re-election – Whitman won Bergen County, and effectively “tied” Florio in Union and Middlesex Counties. Some consider these counties as “base vote” Democratic areas because that is the way they have trended over recent years. That’s a mistake. In fact, under the right circumstances, they are not nearly as loyal to Democratic candidates as others make them out to be.
Now, no one expects Corzine to perform in these three counties as well as he did against Doug Forrester in 2005. However, it is still important that he do well enough to have a good chance of winning. At the same time, given that Democrats far outnumber Republicans in New Jersey, Christie probably needs to duplicate something close to Whitman’s 1993 numbers in Bergen, Union, and Middlesex to be successful statewide.
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Bergen County has more than 900,000 people. By population, it is 50% bigger than Boston, MA. Yet, among its 70 different towns, no one municipality has a population of more than 44,000. It is a quintessential suburban county.
In 1993, Whitman won Bergen by a little more than 10,000 votes. But in 2005, Corzine won with over 34,000 votes. Traditionally, Bergen County has been more critical to a Republican’s statewide chances than to a Democrat’s. This is because in the entire history of New Jersey, no Republican has ever won statewide WITHOUT winning Bergen County.
Nonetheless, Corzine still needs more than just a win in Bergen. He needs to win big, by say, 20,000 or more votes. If he does this, it will be tough for Christie to make up the votes in other places. If Corzine underperforms, then it could be a long night for him.
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In 1993, Florio won Union County by less than 200 votes. But Corzine carried Union four years ago with a plurality of almost 28,000 votes. Christie has been working hard here, even getting endorsed by members of the City of Elizabeth School Board (Elizabeth is the third biggest city in New Jersey, the largest municipality in Union County, and a critical part of the Union County Democratic organization’s GOTV operation.)
If Corzine wins Union County by 12,000 or more votes, Christie will have an even harder time duplicating Whitman’s successful statewide strategy.
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Finally, Middlesex County favored Florio over Whitman in 1993 by just 1,300 votes. But in 2005, Doug Forrester lost to Corzine by more than 32,000 votes. With his low approval ratings, internal fighting in two key Middlesex communities – New Brunswick (pop. 50,000) and Edison (102,000) – Corzine doesn’t have much of a chance if coming anywhere close to his plurality of four years ago, and in fact, he may well be looking at Florio-type numbers.
I think 5,000 is a good threshold. If Corzine wins by more than that, he should feel that much more confident about his chances overall. If he wins by a margin smaller than that, then Christie has effectively neutralized a key block in the statewide Democratic organization. (The same holds true if Christie actually ekes out a win in Middlesex.)
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There are many elements that go into a successful campaign. Getting your base communities to vote for you in strong numbers is one. Winning key swing areas is another. Governor Christine Todd Whitman was the last Republican to do this successfully in a statewide campaign. Her victories were in large part because she was able to win in Bergen County and neutralize the traditional Democratic advantages in Union and Middlesex Counties. It would make sense for Republican Chris Christie to pursue a similar strategy. How these three counties swing – and how far they swing – in this election will once again be crucial to the final outcome in 2009.
Election Day - 1:30 p.m.
Neither campaign is worried about convincing any voters at this point. It is all about getting your supporters to the polls. However, upwards of 8% of likely voters remain undecided. Since they haven’t been “identified” as supporters of one of the candidates, there will be relatively little outreach to these key people on this final day, but if they are self-motivated, this bloc of voters may well decide the election.
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The personal resources that Jon Corzine has put in to the campaign cannot be understated. Not only did it allow him to saturate the airwaves with his commercials but it will allow him to fund an extremely large GOTV (Get Out The Vote) effort, probably the biggest one in recent memory. In tight races, it is always better to have more resources than less, and it always helps to have a larger pool of potential supporters, as the Democrats do. These are some of the reasons why even though Corzine has generally been behind by a point or two in public polls, many observers still think he will pull it out.
******** This election is coming down to the wire. In these kinds of cases, it is good to remember the rhetorical question often asked by political scientists: “How heavy is the straw that breaks the camel’s back?” Answer: “It’s as heavy as every other straw.”
In other words, in close elections, there is never “one thing” that can be isolated and shown to “make the difference.” Everything makes a difference. No one straw breaks the camel’s back. Every straw weighs the same.
We should keep this in mind because I expect that either Corzine or Christie will win by about 25,000 votes, or about 1 percentage point. Lots of reasons will be given to explain the victory / defeat.
For example, if Corzine wins, then unions will probably make the claim that they helped push him over the top. Indeed, organized labor, including the NJ Education Association, is probably the most energized part of the Democratic base this year, and is making a significant effort to get its members to vote as well as mobilize other non-union voters.
Another reason why one side might claim they won or lost by a small number is New Jersey’s vote-by-mail system. (Basically, you used to need an official “excuse” to get an absentee ballot. Vote-by-mail is essentially the same thing as an absentee ballot but now you can just request one without having an official excuse as to why you need it.)
It’s not that labor’s efforts or the vote-by-mail system won’t make a difference in this election. It’s just that they won’t be the only things that make a difference.
Let me add that if vote-by-mail ballots provide Corzine his margin of victory, we should not be surprised if the airwaves are clouded with cries of “fraud” from some Republicans. In that kind of scenario, New Jerseyans may find themselves embroiled in an ongoing legal/legitimacy battle similar to Florida in the 2000 Presidential election.
