The polls have been closed for an hour in New Jersey and just closed in New York. So far, with 14% of the vote tallied in New Jersey, Chris Christie is ahead, but it's far too early and too few votes tallied to determine the outcome.
New York's polls have just closed, so results are going to be a while.
Stay tuned. It will be a long evening.
UPDATE:
CNN is calling the Virginia governor's race for Republican Bob McDonnell.
UPDATE:
Christie continues leading in New Jersey with 28% of the vote tallied. Local elections in New Jersey are being reported here. Hudson, Bergen, Essex and Passaic Counties have yet to report in significant numbers, so expect Christie's early lead to subside somewhat as Democrat strongholds begin reporting.
UPDATE:
MSNBC says with 36% reporting, Christie remains leading with 52% to 42% for Corzine.
UPDATE:
NBC calls New York City's mayor's race for Mike Bloomberg, as if it was a surprise. Of course, Bloomberg spent nearly $100 million of his own money to buy the election win, and had to overturn New York City's term limits law to do it.
New Jersey continues to be too close to call. Politico's map shows the breakdown by county.
UPDATE:
With 64.3% reporting, Christie remains ahead, 50% to 43.8%. Oddly, they've called four counties, but aren't calling either Monmouth or Ocean Counties for Christie, even though more than 95% of the vote was in and Christie was ahead by more than 30 points.
UPDATE:
AP and Politico have both called New Jersey for Republican Chris Christie.
UPDATE:
Bloomberg looks like he's slipped some and the race is far closer than the early declaration of a win for Bloomberg would have suggested.
Meanwhile, early returns for NY-23 are coming in and so far Owens looks like he's ahead by about 5,000 votes. However, the key will be watching which counties are reporting so far.
UPDATE:
Corzine is giving his concession speech. He says he was privileged to be governor of the state. He's thanking his supporters and those in his administration.
All of his money and support of Presidents Obama and Clinton couldn't overcome the fact that Corzine lacked real achievements to campaign upon. The voters decided that Corzine just wasn't the guy to get the job done of getting the state back on the right track - cutting taxes, lowering spending, and making the state more competitive to build the economy.
UPDATE:
NY-23 looks like it's going to go for Bill Owens, much to the consternation of Hoffman supporters. I'll have to analyze the turnout and county figures to see what happened, but it appears that Owens got his supporters to turn out, while Hoffman didn't, despite all the attention on the race and the out-of-district support.
Going back to New Jersey, Corzine made sure to thank Chris Daggett for participating in the race and the debates. There's just a wee bit of irony there, seeing how Democrats actually proferred a pro-Daggett robocall.
UPDATE:
There's about 10,000 absentee ballots to be counted. Those aren't going to go for Hoffman because they were likely cast well in advance of Scozzafava dropping out, so they would likely split between Owens and Scozzafava. That means that there may not be enough votes to bring Hoffman back to take the seat. With 71% of votes counted, Owens has 49% to 45% for Hoffman.
Showing posts with label Dede Scozzafava. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dede Scozzafava. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Election Day 2009
Today marks another election day and while there are only a handful of important races around the country, the New Jersey governor's race is probably the one that should be most closely watched. President Obama has been to the state three times, making four appearances for incumbent Democrat Jon Corzine and the President even taped a robocall for Corzine. Despite outspending his opponents, most of the polls show Republican Christie ahead.
New Jersey's economy is in shambles and the tax burden in the state is the worst in the nation, no thanks to Corzine. Corzine raised the sales tax to fund property tax relief that materialized for all of one year, before he had to sharply limit the rebate all while taxes continued rising. Now, we've got a higher sales tax, higher property taxes, and a property tax rebate that doesn't address the fundamental issues of why the taxes keep rising - out of control government spending.
If Christie can't win with that background, the GOP has serious issues. While the state's demographics may tend to favor Corzine due to Democrats outnumbering registered Republicans, across the board there is serious dissatisfaction with the way that Corzine has run the state. That dissatisfaction has to translate into votes against Corzine.
Should Christie win, it can and should be seen as a major defeat for President Obama, who has essentially run Corzine's campaign, with multiple appearances and providing personnel to assist and run the campaign.
Whoever wins today will have to deal with: multibillion dollar structural deficits; a state workforce that has to be reduced; pension obligations that must be fully funded; a transportation trust fund that is underfunded and needs long term restructuring; and education funding that is unaffordable and unsustainable without improvement in student performance.
That's a mess that should given anyone pause about what they're about to undertake for the next four years, except that Corzine has already shown himself incapable of dealing with the mess. In fact, Corzine expanded education funding to eliminate court mandated Abbott school funding. The problem is that the state can't afford the funding formula he proposed, and all the extra funding since the court mandated funding for the Abbott districts never translated into improved student performance. It was merely a sop for the unions.
UPDATE:
It's hilarious reading about how Corzine is trying to downplay the national nature of his reelection campaign and the NJ political race. He's only had the President rally for him four times in the state. Corzine's campaign is run by a bunch of Obama people.
So, while most attention will be on NY-23 and the race between Doug Hoffman and Bill Owens, the real bellweather will be NJ. If Christie can pull out the win in the strong blue state, that's a signal that Obama's coattails are in tatters and signals that the GOP isn't in as bad shape as many thought, and GOP positioning for 2010 may be better than expected.
However, if Christie can't win in the NJ political environment where Corzine has such high negatives, the GOP has bigger problems than the situation in NY-23.
UPDATE:
Are NJ Democrats using gangbangers to get out the vote? That's the allegations provided here; one of the sources is a cop who recognized one of the thugs as someone he had previously arrested.
Also, there are concerns that absentee ballots may include fraudulent ballots because Democrats have requested that signature checking procedures be suspended.
UPDATE:
Jim at Parkway Rest Stop has some advice for New Jerseyeans going to the polls. Think about if you think that the state needs real change and if you're happy with the direction that the state is headed under Corzine.
That ties into a message by Mike Flynn at Big Government, who notes that fiscal conservatism needs to make a comeback in a big way, and that part of the reason that Scozzafava found herself kicked to the curb had to do with her support for profligate spending at a time when people are concerned about job creation in the private sector.
New Jersey's economy is in shambles and the tax burden in the state is the worst in the nation, no thanks to Corzine. Corzine raised the sales tax to fund property tax relief that materialized for all of one year, before he had to sharply limit the rebate all while taxes continued rising. Now, we've got a higher sales tax, higher property taxes, and a property tax rebate that doesn't address the fundamental issues of why the taxes keep rising - out of control government spending.
If Christie can't win with that background, the GOP has serious issues. While the state's demographics may tend to favor Corzine due to Democrats outnumbering registered Republicans, across the board there is serious dissatisfaction with the way that Corzine has run the state. That dissatisfaction has to translate into votes against Corzine.
Should Christie win, it can and should be seen as a major defeat for President Obama, who has essentially run Corzine's campaign, with multiple appearances and providing personnel to assist and run the campaign.
Whoever wins today will have to deal with: multibillion dollar structural deficits; a state workforce that has to be reduced; pension obligations that must be fully funded; a transportation trust fund that is underfunded and needs long term restructuring; and education funding that is unaffordable and unsustainable without improvement in student performance.
That's a mess that should given anyone pause about what they're about to undertake for the next four years, except that Corzine has already shown himself incapable of dealing with the mess. In fact, Corzine expanded education funding to eliminate court mandated Abbott school funding. The problem is that the state can't afford the funding formula he proposed, and all the extra funding since the court mandated funding for the Abbott districts never translated into improved student performance. It was merely a sop for the unions.
UPDATE:
It's hilarious reading about how Corzine is trying to downplay the national nature of his reelection campaign and the NJ political race. He's only had the President rally for him four times in the state. Corzine's campaign is run by a bunch of Obama people.
So, while most attention will be on NY-23 and the race between Doug Hoffman and Bill Owens, the real bellweather will be NJ. If Christie can pull out the win in the strong blue state, that's a signal that Obama's coattails are in tatters and signals that the GOP isn't in as bad shape as many thought, and GOP positioning for 2010 may be better than expected.
However, if Christie can't win in the NJ political environment where Corzine has such high negatives, the GOP has bigger problems than the situation in NY-23.
UPDATE:
Are NJ Democrats using gangbangers to get out the vote? That's the allegations provided here; one of the sources is a cop who recognized one of the thugs as someone he had previously arrested.
That is what happened Sunday on a quiet street in Morris Township. The officer, who’s name we are with holding, specifically heard the men discussing that he was a police officer and that they now know where he lives. The officer confronted the men and they took off. He contacted the local police who responded and caught up with them and about a dozen other men a few blocks away. According to the police report, the men were known criminals and when asked why they were in the neighborhood they stated they were “campaigning for the Democratic Party.”I expect to see more of these kinds of claims through the day.
Also, there are concerns that absentee ballots may include fraudulent ballots because Democrats have requested that signature checking procedures be suspended.
UPDATE:
Jim at Parkway Rest Stop has some advice for New Jerseyeans going to the polls. Think about if you think that the state needs real change and if you're happy with the direction that the state is headed under Corzine.
That ties into a message by Mike Flynn at Big Government, who notes that fiscal conservatism needs to make a comeback in a big way, and that part of the reason that Scozzafava found herself kicked to the curb had to do with her support for profligate spending at a time when people are concerned about job creation in the private sector.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Scozzafava Drops Out Of NY-23 Congressional Race
I didn't see this coming, but Dede Scozzafava has suspended her campaign with just days before the special election to fill the seat vacated by McHugh. This opens the way for Doug Hoffman to take on Democrat Bill Owens in a straight up fight in a district that has traditionally gone Republican.
Both Scozzafava and Hoffman are seriously flawed candidates. Hoffman isn't even a resident of the district he's hoping to represent, which I find abhorrent and should disqualify him outright. Scozzafava was an insider who has significant ties to ACORN and the WFP, and while the WFP backs Democrat Bill Owens in this race, Scozzafava's husband has worked quite a bit for both organizations.
Owens will likely go down to defeat because voters will coalesce behind Hoffman, not Owens. Looking back at the past several election cycles in NY-23, and Democrats have not won the seat.
Now, what will this mean outside the district? That's the million dollar question. Democrats will try and say that this shows that the GOP is fracturing and in the firm grip of conservatives and the far right. They'd be right to a degree, but that would be more than offset by a win by Chris Christie in New Jersey's gubernatorial race. No, what this shows is the continuing failure of the state GOP in New York to proffer candidates that are acceptable to the voters in their districts, and it took a rogue campaign by Hoffman to expose still more problems with the insider attitudes of the state GOP. Ed Cox, the head of the state GOP has to clean house and begin to understand that they have to work from the ground up to provide candidates that can win elections throughout the state from the local level on up to statewide races.
Cox needs to work the ground game and understand that tax and spend is destroying the state GOP because fiscal conservatives have no place to go and trying to spend less against Democrats is a losing cause because voters would rather vote for those who are going to spend more than those who are going to spend just a bit less.
The decision to suspend her campaign is a boost for Hoffman, who already had the support of 50 percent of GOP voters, according to a newly-released Siena poll, and is now well-positioned to win over the 25 percent of Republicans who had been sticking with Scozzafava.Hoffman is well to the right of the district and has garnered quite a bit of support from outside the state, he's also started to pick up support from mainstream Republicans in the state, including former Governor George Pataki. Pataki must have seen the writing on the wall yesterday when he came out backing Hoffman over Scozzafava.
Scozzafava has “probably made her last campaign appearance between now and Election Day,” spokesman Matt Burns told POLITICO. “She’s releasing her support to the two other candidates."
"I had a discussion with her last night, and we made the decision after I spoke with her. We talked about it, what this came down to was spending. It came down to the ability to defend herself from the get-go. And that’s the reality. She was unable to define herself where the people didn’t know her."
Both Scozzafava and Hoffman are seriously flawed candidates. Hoffman isn't even a resident of the district he's hoping to represent, which I find abhorrent and should disqualify him outright. Scozzafava was an insider who has significant ties to ACORN and the WFP, and while the WFP backs Democrat Bill Owens in this race, Scozzafava's husband has worked quite a bit for both organizations.
Owens will likely go down to defeat because voters will coalesce behind Hoffman, not Owens. Looking back at the past several election cycles in NY-23, and Democrats have not won the seat.
Now, what will this mean outside the district? That's the million dollar question. Democrats will try and say that this shows that the GOP is fracturing and in the firm grip of conservatives and the far right. They'd be right to a degree, but that would be more than offset by a win by Chris Christie in New Jersey's gubernatorial race. No, what this shows is the continuing failure of the state GOP in New York to proffer candidates that are acceptable to the voters in their districts, and it took a rogue campaign by Hoffman to expose still more problems with the insider attitudes of the state GOP. Ed Cox, the head of the state GOP has to clean house and begin to understand that they have to work from the ground up to provide candidates that can win elections throughout the state from the local level on up to statewide races.
Cox needs to work the ground game and understand that tax and spend is destroying the state GOP because fiscal conservatives have no place to go and trying to spend less against Democrats is a losing cause because voters would rather vote for those who are going to spend more than those who are going to spend just a bit less.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Two Dubious Polls; NY-23 and NJ Governors Race
NY-23 is a contentious Congressional race to fill the seat vacated by Rep. John McHugh, who was chosen by President Obama to be his Secretary of the Army. It's a three-way race between Republican Dede Scozzafava, Democrat Bill Owens, and Conservative Doug Hoffman. The district leans Republican, so a split vote between Scozzafava and Hoffman could benefit Owens.
A Club for Growth poll shows Hoffman ahead, but the sample size is one that caught my attention.
Meanwhile, another unreliable poll is now being proffered to indicate that Jon Corzine has rebounded and taken a significant lead over Republican challenger Chris Christie and longshot independent Chris Daggett. It was taken by Suffolk University (cross tabs are here) and among the oddities is that it included all politicians on the ballot for governor, not just the top three candidates. It also has unbelievably high undecided figures, which would swamp any possible advantage proffered to Corzine by the poll. Only 400 people were counted in this particular poll.
On question 14 (page 17 of cross tabs), which asks those who were undecided, (which comprised nearly 25% of those polled) "if you are standing in a voting booth right now, who would you vote for" out of the 400 polled, only 104 actually answered this particular question, and of that total, 26 said Corzine, 14 for Christie, and 2 for Daggett. 56 said they were undecided.
That's a far higher number of undecideds at this stage than other races. It definitely seems that this is related to the poll's methodologies.
By comparison, Quinnipiac polled more than three times that amount - 1,200 statewide - to get a reasonable snapshot of views in their last major poll released mid-October.
I'm not alone in questioning the Suffolk poll. Other polls show that the number of undecided voters is half that what was seen in the Suffolk poll, and it seems to indicate the methodologies used by Suffolk appear to have affected the poll results. Moreover, no poll taken in the past couple of months have shown a Corzine lead of greater than three points - and those have been few and far between. It has only been in the last couple of weeks that Corzine has closed the gap to a dead heat, and that's largely due to a massive attack ad campaign against Christie.
What's troubling is that the poll indicates that a clear majority think that Corzine will win, regardless of their preference.
UPDATE:
Small sample size relates directly to margin of error. The smaller the sample size, the greater the margin of error. That's why many reputable pollsters run samples of at least 1,000 people. Smaller than that, and results will fall within the margin of error.
A Club for Growth poll shows Hoffman ahead, but the sample size is one that caught my attention.
The poll of 300 likely voters, conducted October 24-25, 2009, shows Conservative Doug Hoffman at 31.3%, Democrat Bill Owens at 27.0%, Republican Dede Scozzafava at 19.7%, and 22% undecided. The poll's margin of error is +/- 5.66%. No information was provided about any of the candidates prior to the ballot question.300 people is far less than what would otherwise be considered an adequate number to fair sample. Other polls from the last week or two have shown a near dead heat. Given the margin of error and the small sample size, I think it's fair to say that the poll is unreliable as an indicator of voter sentiment in the district.
This is the third poll done for the Club for Growth in the NY-23 special election, and Doug Hoffman is the only candidate to show an increase in his support levels in each successive poll. The momentum in the race is clearly with Hoffman.
Meanwhile, another unreliable poll is now being proffered to indicate that Jon Corzine has rebounded and taken a significant lead over Republican challenger Chris Christie and longshot independent Chris Daggett. It was taken by Suffolk University (cross tabs are here) and among the oddities is that it included all politicians on the ballot for governor, not just the top three candidates. It also has unbelievably high undecided figures, which would swamp any possible advantage proffered to Corzine by the poll. Only 400 people were counted in this particular poll.
On question 14 (page 17 of cross tabs), which asks those who were undecided, (which comprised nearly 25% of those polled) "if you are standing in a voting booth right now, who would you vote for" out of the 400 polled, only 104 actually answered this particular question, and of that total, 26 said Corzine, 14 for Christie, and 2 for Daggett. 56 said they were undecided.
That's a far higher number of undecideds at this stage than other races. It definitely seems that this is related to the poll's methodologies.
By comparison, Quinnipiac polled more than three times that amount - 1,200 statewide - to get a reasonable snapshot of views in their last major poll released mid-October.
I'm not alone in questioning the Suffolk poll. Other polls show that the number of undecided voters is half that what was seen in the Suffolk poll, and it seems to indicate the methodologies used by Suffolk appear to have affected the poll results. Moreover, no poll taken in the past couple of months have shown a Corzine lead of greater than three points - and those have been few and far between. It has only been in the last couple of weeks that Corzine has closed the gap to a dead heat, and that's largely due to a massive attack ad campaign against Christie.
What's troubling is that the poll indicates that a clear majority think that Corzine will win, regardless of their preference.
UPDATE:
Small sample size relates directly to margin of error. The smaller the sample size, the greater the margin of error. That's why many reputable pollsters run samples of at least 1,000 people. Smaller than that, and results will fall within the margin of error.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)