New Jersey’s 2012 Agenda

With Governor Chris Christie about to unveil his new budget, it’s a good time to reconcile the agenda items of various players in New Jersey’s policy process.  Unfortunately, it appears that very few ledger entries line up.

The governor’s State of the State address last month laid out his key agenda items for the year.  These include a 10% income tax cut, reform of drug sentencing laws, and education initiatives such as teacher tenure and charter school expansion.  He is also pushing the recommendations of the Barer Report to merge units of the state’s higher education system, including Rutgers, Rowan, and UMDNJ.

The legislature’s agenda can be found by examining what the Democratic leadership has put on the docket this session. As we all know, same sex marriage was Priority One. Legislative leaders have also been talking about a push for a minimum wage increase and bringing back the so-called millionaires’ tax.

Hmm.  There appears to be no commonality between the gubernatorial and legislative agendas.  But of course, they are doing this for the good of the New Jersey so some of these items must rank high with the public.  Right?

Not quite.  The recent Monmouth University/NJ Press Media Poll asked Garden State residents to name, in their own words, the most pressing issues facing the state.

Let’s look at how some of the leaders’ agenda items stack up with the issues that occupy their constituents.

Same-sex marriage?  Only 2% of the public name this as one of the state’s most important concerns.

Higher education?  Just 3% say this needs to top the agenda.

Drugs and crime?  That’s a priority for only 5%.

How about an income tax cut or the millionaires’ tax – those have to be important, right?  Just 8% of New Jerseyans say changes to the state’s income tax needs to be on the front burner.

Public schools?  Well, this one is a little higher at 20%, although it’s not clear that the governor’s specific agenda items are what these concerned residents have in mind.

So, what does top the public agenda here in New Jersey?  What are the burning issues that Garden State residents want their elected leaders to tackle? 

It’s no contest:  Property Taxes and Jobs.  Each was mentioned by a whopping 42% of those polled!  And this was off the top of their heads, mind you – the poll didn’t provide choices.

To be fair, both the governor and legislature claim they have introduced proposals meant to spur job growth, although the comprehensiveness of any jobs plan is not apparent. 

The disappearance of property taxes from the leadership agenda, though, is truly curious.  After pushing for a toolkit of reforms in his first two years in office, the governor seems to have declared Mission Accomplished.

The Democrats have caught on to that and are trying to tag Governor Christie with dropping the ball.  But that is all they have done.  The legislature has a whole raft of property tax legislation from prior years – including from the ill-fated 2006 special session – that they appear to have absolutely no intention of moving through the legislature.

If you’ve paid close attention to the rhetoric out of Trenton over the past few weeks, you’ll notice that both Republicans and Democrats have ramped up the “Property Taxes & Jobs” mantra in their public statements.  At least they now recognize they can’t escape the public’s demand for action on these issues.

The question is whether they will put any meat on those bones by enacting an agenda in line with these goals.  Or will there continue to be a disconnect between Trenton’s agenda and the rest of New Jersey?

Trenton's Referendum Mania

Cross-posted at PolitickerNJ

It’s referendum mania in Trenton!  The governor and Republican legislators want to put same sex marriage to a public vote.  Democratic legislators want to put charter school approval to a public vote.

What do they have in common?  In each case, the sponsors are opposed to the policy in question.  Many believe that they are using the referendum option as a “democratic” smokescreen for a policy they don’t want enacted.

Not only is this bald-faced politics, but it’s a slippery slope.  The public lacks both access to information and the ability to deliberate on these types of issues – issues which our founders specifically said should be left to an informed, deliberative system of representative government.

The New Jersey Supreme Court declared that the state must provide and protect identical legal rights for civilly joined same sex couples as it does for married heterosexual couples. Same sex marriage advocates argue this hasn’t happened in practice under the state’s civil union law.  They have provided witnesses who give compelling stories of instances when their rights were denied.  Opponents have argued these are isolated instances that can be corrected with improvements to existing law.

The researcher in me says there is a pretty easy way to determine this.  Take a random sample of same sex civil union couples and a matched sample of heterosexual couples married at the same time and survey them.  If the former group has had significantly more problems with health insurance, parental rights, having next of kin rights honored, etc. – then the argument that civil unions don’t meet the Court’s mandate would be strong.  If not, perhaps the incidents are isolated and modifications to the current bill are all that is needed.  This is something that should be examined honestly by our three governmental branches.

Polls, including a recent one by Monmouth University/NJ Press Media, show that public support for same sex marriage has risen in the past couple of years.  It appears that the debate – particularly the argument that civil unions are not providing equal rights – may be resonating with more New Jerseyans.  Or perhaps, residents are simply getting tired of this debate and want to move in a definitive direction so government will start concentrating on other pressing issues.  Either way, the state of public opinion is absolutely no justification for putting this issue on the ballot.

The bottom line is you don’t put civil rights to a public vote.  The founders were very clear on this.  That is why they created a Republic with (supposedly) deliberative institutions of elected representatives.  Our system was specifically set up to protect the interests of groups who may be in a numerical minority.  The folks in Trenton may do well by brushing up on James Madison’s argument to that effect in the Federalist Papers (#10).

Specifically he wrote that the purpose of our system of government is “to refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens … [so] that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the People, will be more consonant to the public good, than if pronounced by the people themselves.”

Now, I do agree that limited initiative and referendum, like the type championed by the late Congressman Bob Franks, makes a lot of sense.  Borrowing and bonding – that should always be approved by those who are responsible to pay the debt.  Certain other macro-fiscal issues are also appropriate for a public vote.  And anything that requires an outright change to the state’s Constitution requires voter approval.

But putting anything beyond that on the ballot is an invitation to demagoguery.  And once that door is open, it will be near impossible to close.

What We Learned from Nevada

Cross-posted at PolitickerNJ

[Acknowledgements:  Some of the data for this analysis was made available by NBC News, where I was an entrance poll analyst on caucus night.]

As I write this – more than 12 hours after the final caucus concluded – over one quarter of Nevada’s votes remain to be tallied.  I’m guessing that Chumlee of “Pawn Stars” fame has been put in charge of the Clark County vote count operation.

Even so, we know the basic results from Saturday.  And they have raised some new talking points among pundits.  Are strong conservatives becoming more comfortable with Mitt Romney?  And can we glean anything from these results about how he would fare in a general election?

Even though the final vote totals aren’t in, the entrance poll gives some insight on emerging trends that have an impact on front-runner Mitt Romney.

Conservatives and Evangelicals

Nevada’s caucuses saw the highest proportion of voters calling themselves very conservative.  Nearly half – 49% – described themselves that way, which is comparable to Iowa (47%) but much higher than South Carolina (36%), Florida (33%), and New Hampshire (21%).

Romney lost these voters in Iowa, South Carolina and Florida.  He had a nominal win among the smaller group of very conservative voters in New Hampshire.  But in Nevada, he racked up nearly half of this group’s vote – 46% to 25% for New Gingrich.

So what was different about Nevada’s very conservative voters?  On the whole, not much.  They look the same as very conservative voters in the other four states both demographically (age, gender, income, etc.) and in terms of issues and candidate quality preferences.  The single area where the Silver State’s conservative bloc differs from prior contests is the significantly lower proportion of evangelical voters.

In fact, Nevada’s caucuses saw the second smallest proportion of voters who described themselves as Evangelical Christians.  It was 28% there, compared to 64% in South Carolina, 57% in Iowa, and 47% in Florida.  Only New Hampshire was lower at 22%.

Of course one of the reasons for the low evangelical total in Nevada is the high number of Mormons.  More than 1-in-4 caucus goers belong to the same faith as Mitt Romney.  In the four prior contests, Mormons numbered only 1%.  As expected they went overwhelmingly for Romney – about 9-in-10.

Both Mormons and Catholics are much less likely than Protestants and other Christians to call themselves “born again.”  Mormons and Catholics combined made up 46% of the Republican electorate in Nevada, 36% in New Hampshire, and 33% in Florida – the states that Romney won so far.  These two denominations accounted for only 14% of voters in South Carolina, where Gingrich was the victor.  (The Iowa entrance poll did not include data on religion.)

The importance of this is that there exists a correlation between being a strong conservative and being evangelical.  In states where Romney did poorly with conservatives, the exit polls suggest that it had less to do with his experience and issue positions and more to do with his religion.  It seems that concerns about Romney’s faith continue to occupy the minds of many GOP voters.  This will be important to watch in heavily evangelical Protestant states, particularly in the South.

The Rich Thing

The exit polls in the five nomination contests held so far show a significant wealth gap in Mitt Romney’s support.  In the three states he won, Romney garnered between 48% and 58% support levels among Republican voters earning more than $100,000 a year.  And his share was even higher among those who earn over $200,000.

More importantly, Romney did worse among voters earning below $30,000 than he did among the wealthiest voters in all five states contested so far.  The gap in his support between high earners and low earners was 5 points in South Carolina, 10 points in Florida, 17 points in New Hampshire, 21 points in Iowa, and a whopping 29 points in Nevada.

It seems that inartful comments about the poor and firing people, not to mention Donald Trump’s endorsement, has done nothing to help Romney close this “wealth gap” among GOP voters.  If anything, it may have been exacerbated by these missteps.

The take away from Nevada is this.  If Mitt Romney can navigate around the evangelical vote to win the GOP nomination, a key task in November will be to convince less affluent independent voters that he is on their side.  So far, he has not been able to seal that deal with lower income voters from his own party.

New Hampshire Vote Reveals Romney Challenges

[Acknowledgements:  The data for this analysis was made available by NBC News, where I was an exit poll analyst on primary night.]

Mitt Romney pulled off something no non-incumbent presidential candidate has done before:  won both Iowa and New Hampshire.  Victories in South Carolina and, more importantly, Florida could pretty much set the seal on this year’s GOP contest.

However, the New Hampshire exit poll indicates some potential challenges that lie ahead if Romney does indeed emerge as President Barack Obama’s opponent.

The first challenge is rallying the base behind him.  The good news:  two-thirds (66%) of New Hampshire GOP voters said they were satisfied with their choice of candidates.  Back in 1996, when Republicans were preparing to take on President Bill Clinton, fewer – 54% – said they were satisfied with the field.

The bad news:  6-in-10 Republican primary participants voted for someone other than Romney.  And as reported on MSNBC last night, 55% of those voters said they would be dissatisfied if Romney ended up the nominee.  [As a side note, many more Romney supporters would be upset if their guy lost the nomination to Rick Santorum (60%), Newt Gingrich (64%), or Ron Paul (72%).]

This is not particularly unusual since the competition is still active.  Partisans tend to get behind their nominee after the dust settles.  The real issue is whether less resolute Republicans – i.e. libertarian-minded voters – will do the same.  According to the exit poll, the problem may not be winning over supporters of Gingrich, Santorum & co – these voters are about evenly divided on whether they would be happy with a Romney nomination.  The bigger challenge would be convincing Paul voters, 68% of whom who would be dissatisfied if Romney was the Republican standard bearer.  The threat of a libertarian third party candidate poses real trouble.

One positive sign for Romney is that he did well among independent voters in New Hampshire.  This group was larger than in past contests.  A whopping 44% of voters on Tuesday said they were registered independent – or undeclared as it is called in New Hampshire.  In 2008, this group’s share of the Republican primary vote was lower at 34%.  And before anyone claims that this is because many independents voted in the Democratic primary last time around, note that undeclared voters made up just 27% of the New Hampshire GOP primary electorate in 1996 when the Democratic primary was uncontested.

It’s important to remember that independents who vote in a Republican primary – no matter how large a group they may be – are not representative of independent voters in a general election.  It is still good news for Romney, though, that he did well among these non-partisans – getting 32% of their vote to 30% for Paul.  In Iowa, Paul won the self-identified independent vote outright at 43%.

There are some other intriguing tea leaves in the New Hampshire exit poll results.  Republican primary voters said they want the next president to focus more on cutting the federal deficit even if it hampers job growth (60%) than work to create jobs if it widens the budget gap (40%).  That priority is not too surprising.  The Granite State has a 5.2% unemployment rate, the fourth lowest in the nation.

Independent voters elsewhere, especially in a general election, will be more concerned about jobs.  And Mitt Romney did well among New Hampshire voters who prioritized jobs over the deficit, winning 44% of this group.

One dark cloud, though, is that Romney is about to get hit hard on job creation.  A Super PAC supporting Gingrich has released a documentary about Romney’s career at Bain Capital – focusing on the jobs lost when Bain acquired and disposed of a number of other companies. They plan to use this in attack ads in South Carolina, which is up next on the primary schedule.

As NBC’s Chuck Todd observed, if you had asked six months ago whether Romney’s GOP opponents would be attacking the Massachusetts health care plan or his time as a corporate investor…  Well, you get the picture.

That means that Romney’s biggest problem now could be that his fellow Republicans are doing the Obama campaign’s work for them.

Democrats’ Gay Marriage Gambit

New Jersey’s legislative leadership announced today that their first bill of the new session will be legalizing gay marriage. 

Senate President Steve Sweeney, who abstained on this bill during the last days of Jon Corzine’s administration, now says he made a mistake.  Further, he says that his decision calculus two years ago was politically driven, but this time it is not.  Really?

I’m not saying that Sen. Sweeney has not had a change of heart on the issue.  I believe he has.  But to bring it up now, when it is all but certain that Gov. Christie will veto the bill makes it hard to overlook the political implications of making the governor go on record.

There were three key messages espoused by proponents at today’s press conference.  Each had a political undercurrent.  Let’s break them down.

“Civil unions are a failed experiment” – This is an appeal to public opinion.  Polls show that New Jerseyans have become more supportive of gay marriage over the past few years.  An Eagleton-Rutgers Poll released in October found 52% of state residents saying gay marriage should be legal.  Some analysis I did a few years ago on the strength of this support indicates that majority support levels are soft and susceptible to shift.

So, public support for gay marriage is not definitively in the majority yet.  However, the same Eagleton poll found that support for “marriage equality” is decidedly in the majority at 61%.  If gay marriage advocates can convince the public that the only way to achieve this equality is through “marriage” they are on track to solidifying public support.

“It’s a civil rights issue” – This is an appeal to the Democrats’ own base.  Two years ago, the gay marriage bill passed in the Assembly but garnered only 14 affirmative votes in the Senate.

Sen. Sweeney indicated that he will have the 21 votes needed for passage, but it’s uncertain if he will have any more than that.  And when Sen. Loretta Weinberg announced that Jen Beck “was going to try to be here” at the press conference, it suggested that the Republican senator’s support would be necessary.

Back in 2010, it was believed that Beck would be among a small group of GOP legislators to support gay marriage. She ended up voting no after then-Governor-elect Christie instructed his fellow Republicans not to saddle him with pressure from the right to repeal gay marriage as he entered office.

Beck had a change of heart last year and said she now supports gay marriage.  It’s probably only a coincidence that she made her support known after the new legislative map plonked Asbury Park in her district.

Beck has bucked from the GOP voting bloc before, specifically on women’s health center funding.  But in that case, her vote was not needed for passage.  If she really is the 21^st vote on gay marriage, then you better believe the governor’s people will put a full court press on her to keep this bill from coming to his desk.

And that’s where the civil rights message comes in.  Two of the “no” votes in 2010 came from Ron Rice and Shirley Turner, two African-American senators.  It’s unlikely that Rice’s mind will be changed based on his comments during the debate two years ago.  That means Democrats are hoping that the civil rights argument will work on Turner and they won’t have to rely on Beck.

“We hope Gov. Christie has a change of heart” – The Democrats may hope that, but there is no one who expects it.  And this is why the bill was brought up now.  It’s the opening salvo in the 2013 gubernatorial campaign.

A Christie veto – for which there is no chance of an override – will be used by Democrats to paint the governor as someone who is kowtowing to the right wing of his own party.  They will say he is more interested in his national political ambitions then in serving the people of New Jersey.

And what if the governor does have a change of heart and actually signs the bill – or lets it take effect without his signature?  Then he has pretty much kissed his national political future goodbye.

Either way, Democrats believe it’s a political win for them.

I’m not so sure.  Assuming that Christie vetoes gay marriage, there’s no guarantee that it will be a salient political issue in 2013.  Voters will be looking at their tax bills and overall economic well-being when deciding whether to give the governor another four years in office.

Looking at the latest poll numbers, Gov. Christie seems to be in fairly good position. Of course, two years is a long time and if his re-election prospects are iffy, then a gay marriage veto could be the deciding factor in a close race.

And that’s what the Democrats are really hoping for.

Christie, er, Romney Wins Iowa

Sure, it was only by 8 votes.  And the vote count probably wasn’t accurate.  And it has no bearing on the actual number of Iowa delegates he will get.  But Mitt Romney won the Iowa caucuses.  Just a few weeks ago, this seemed highly improbable.

So what happened?  A stealth organizing campaign and oodles of PAC spending on TV ads tearing down his opponents certainly played the major role.  But the on-the-ground presence of New Jersey’s governor in the final days before the vote will certainly be seen as a factor – certainly by Chris Christie’s supporters.

It’s difficult to say whether many actual caucus goers were swayed by Christie’s campaign appearances.  But he went there.  He got good press.  And Romney won.  Favor owed.  That’s good for Christie and good for New Jersey.

In the end, Romney did a couple points better than the 23% he was averaging in the final pre-election polls leading up to the vote.  This was just 2 points shy of the 27% win I predicted for him two weeks ago.

All the other candidates, but one, performed about a point or two below their pre-election poll numbers.  The exception was Rick Santorum, who finished more than 8 percentage points above his final pre-election average of 16%.

Basically, each of the other candidates lost a little support to Santorum in the final days and he and Romney split the remaining undecided vote.  It’s worth noting that Santorum did not hit double digits in any poll until fifteen days before the caucus.  He was steadily gaining support at the rate of a couple points a day in the final week.  The last poll interviews were conducted on January 1.  If polling had continued up to the caucus itself, he could have conceivably ended with a 23% showing in pre-election polls.

So the polls were not off the mark.  The major bone of contention over the pre-election polls was whether Ron Paul’s support was being accurately represented.  Many pundits noted that his firmly committed supporters were younger, and thus less likely to be included in a standard landline telephone survey.  I argued the opposite, that while they may be committed, the polls had too many independents in their sample and were thus over-representing the number of Paul supporters who would actually show up at a caucus. 

In the end, it was neither.  The final poll average for Paul was 21.5%.  He got 21.4% of the vote.  He won the independent vote with 43%.  This was lower than some polls had shown him doing among this group.  While 23% of caucus goers identifying themselves as politically independent was higher than the 13% who did so in 2008, it was also lower than some pundits had predicted.  In the end, the polling on Paul’s support was pretty much on target.

Interestingly, Iowa GOP voters who said the most important candidate quality was being a “true conservative” split their vote between the libertarian Paul (37%) and the socially conservative Santorum (36%).  This underlines a key issue in polling on political ideology – the meaning of these terms are in the eye of the beholder.

Mitt Romney used his Iowa victory speech to congratulate Santorum and Paul on their showings and on their campaigns in general.  He made it clear that he wants GOP voters to see this as a 3-way race.  If you put his remarks through the politi-speak translator, his message for voters in upcoming primary states is: “Your only choices to take on President Obama now are the far right wingnut, the libertarian wacko, or me!”

And that brings us back to Chris “I’m tired of dealing with the crazies” Christie.  Yes, he had a big night in Iowa.  But he has a lot of work ahead of him campaigning for Romney in other states where his Jersey charisma may hold some sway.  That’s probably not in the South, by the way.

 

P.S. One disappointing result for those of us who enjoy the spectator sport of all this was Michele Bachmann’s withdrawal after getting just 5% of the vote.  She barely exceeded the 4,800 votes she garnered at the Ames corndog straw poll spectacle in August.  I had predicted (hoped?) she would get her ground game in action and squeak out a narrow 3^rd place finish. Boy, was I wrong!  [And it also demonstrates how extraordinarily fluid this race has been]

Redistricting Commission Combines 8 and 9

I’m getting ready to drive 250 miles for Christmas, so this lacks the in-depth number crunching you’ve come to know and love me for.  But here are my initial thoughts about New Jersey’s Congressional redistricting commission decision.

First, let’s drop the pretense that districts 5 and 9 were combined.  They weren’t.

John Farmer said that he went into this process believing that the delegation should be split 6-6 and that the most likely candidates for merger were the Democratic 8^th (Pascrell) and 9^th(Rothman).  He said that former Assembly Speaker Joe Roberts convinced him that the voters – or at least those in north Jersey – should decide whether the state’s delegation should be 7-5 or 6-6.  To do this would mean combining districts 5 and 9.

So, then why did Farmer vote for a map that combined 8 and 9?  Let’s look at the numbers for the new District 9 (which is supposed to be the old District 8).  Of the total population of 732,658 in the new district, 54% are currently represented by Rothman and 43% are represented by Pascrell.  (Another 3% are represented by Scot Garret in the 5^th). 

Remember – this is supposed to be Pascrell’s district, but less than half of his current constituents live in “his” new district.  [This would have given Alan “Continuity of Representation” Rosenthal conniptions.]

In the new 5^th – which is supposed to be the “combined” district – 80% of then population is currently represented by Garrett and just 20% is represented by Rothman!  Yes, you read that right.  Four-fifths of this so-called “fair fight” district is from the current Republican district.

So how did Farmer justify calling the new 5th the combine district rather than the new 9^th?  Umm, because Rothman’s current hometown was part of the move to the 5^th – even though the VAST majority of Rothman’s constituents are now in “Pascrell’s district.”

Another fallacy espoused by Farmer is that the new 3^rd is now a competitive district.  Umm, how do you figure that one?  I don’t even need to run the numbers to know that taking out Democratic stronghold Cherry Hill and replacing it with the Republican town of Brick makes this already Republican-leaning district less competitive, rather than more.  Sure, they threw in a few more Delaware River towns, but the claim that this district is competitive is patently false.  I’m left wondering if Farmer had his own stats person to validate the Republican’s numbers, or if he simply took the GOP claim at face value.

Now, let me make this perfectly clear – I am not criticizing John Farmer’s decision to side with the GOP.  I’ve seen the Democrats’ map.  It looks eerily similar to the Republican one.

The 7^th and 12^th districts in both maps are much more compact than the current configurations, although both leave the 6^th – shown by independent analysis to be one of the least compact districts in the country – as a bizarre coastal snake.  Both maps added Brick to the 3^rd, although the Dems made it less compact in order to keep it competitive.

Albio Sires district underwent drastic changes in geography in both maps, with both side lopping off the non-contiguous Middlesex County portion of the current 13^th and moving it further into Hudson.  Both maps also included the little “Plainfield hook” on the northern end of district 12.  [By the way, Rush Holt got a nice gift in this map – a safe and relatively compact district.]

Both maps fetishly preserved Chris Smith’s hometown of Hamilton (i.e. the place where he rents an apartment) Robbinsville (where he owns a dwelling - according to a staffer who emailed me after seeing this column) in the 4^th, but the Republicans got closer to making this into the costal district that it should be. 

The Democrats District 5 is only slightly better than the GOP’s from a community of interest standpoint, but they fell into the unfortunate east-west vertical map drawing on districts 11 and 7 that has epitomized the bad maps of the past.

So, I really have little criticism of Farmer’s eventual choice.  It certainly is not an ideal map, and I’m not ready to say that is a good map.  But it certainly is a better map than the one we have now, and perhaps slightly better than the one submitted by the Democrats, where they perhaps overreached by creating more competitive districts in both the 5^th and the 3^rd.

My one complaint is that John Farmer should be honest about the map.  He said at the opening of today’s vote that his intention at the outset of this process was to look for a map that gave the state delegation a 6-6 split and combined the two northeastern Democratic districts.  That’s exactly what he voted for and he should be willing to admit it.

P.S.  I'm not sure whether I can claim a "win" for predicting Farmer's preference here.  I said a fair fight 5 v. 9 would appeal to him.  That's what he claimed we got, so I would be right by that standard, but that's not what the numbers say we got.

How Iowa Will Sink Ron Paul

Sure, I know Iowa’s nearly two weeks away.  But I’m taking next week off, so I thought I’d go out on a limb and make some predictions now about the January 3rd caucuses.

Barack Obama will win the Democratic caucus in a landslide.  OK, that was too easy.  Let me take a stab at the Republican race.

For a while, it looked like Newt Gingrich was the one to beat, but the latest state and national polls show his popularity sliding.  As I observed in a previous column, all the other ABM (Anybody but Mitt) candidates enjoyed five to six week upswings in their poll numbers followed by sharp drop-offs.  Gingrich reached the six-week mark about 7 days ago – and right on cue, his poll numbers started to tumble.  [I’m beginning to think that an ADD epidemic has struck one-fifth of the GOP primary electorate.  The predictability of their fickleness is uncanny – and unnerving.]

Gingrich will continue to go down, and no matter what share of the vote he takes in Iowa, if he doesn’t win it, he will have performed below expectations.  And that is what will be focused on – performance against somewhat arbitrary, and often erroneous, expectations.

This brings us to Ron Paul.  He is surging in Iowa (and experiencing a slight but noticeable increase in his national support).  Among the four Iowa polls out this week, he leads the pack by 3 to 6 points in three polls (Insider Advantage, Iowa State U, PPP) and places second to Mitt Romney by 5 points in one (Rasmussen).

Are the polls accurate - will Ron Paul win Iowa?  It’s really too early to tell.  Iowa caucus polls are notoriously unstable even in the final weeks.  We saw this for both parties’ caucuses in 2008.  It wasn’t until the final Des Moines Register poll conducted just days before the last caucuses that we got a fairly accurate read of what would happen.

Dave Peterson from Iowa State’s Harkin Institute, one of the academics behind that poll, remarked, “I think Paul probably under-polls.”  I actually think it’s the opposite in this case – Paul is now over-polling, mainly because the demographic mix of voters in these Iowa caucus polls may unrepresentative of actual caucus-goers.

Keep in mind that approximately 610,000 registered Republicans and 705,000 registered independents are eligible to show up at the GOP caucuses.  In 2008, just 119,000 did.  In 2000, the turnout was about 88,000.  In other words, much less than 10% of the eligible electorate will show up.  Determining who they are for a poll is not easy. 

For one, most of the public pollsters rely on self-reported intentions of caucus attendance.  Unlike primaries where turnout records are publicly available, the Iowa Secretary of State does not maintain caucus attendance – the parties do.  If you want past turnout reports you have to buy those lists directly from the parties at a steep cost.  Furthermore, past caucus attendance is really not a good barometer of current intentions (again, unlike primaries).

Polling the Iowa caucuses is notoriously difficult.  Which brings us back to Ron Paul.  He does extraordinarily well among younger (i.e. under the age of 45), independent voters.  The released cross-tabulations from two polls demonstrate this.

The Insider Advantage poll shows Paul with nearly half the vote among “likely caucus goers” under the age of 30 and leading with 30% among those age 30 to 44.  He runs even with Romney (22% each) among those age 45-64, but Romney pulls ahead among those age 65 and over with Paul dropping to 5^th place.  Among self-identified independent voters, Paul leads with 28%, compared to 19% for Rick Perry and 17% for Romney.  Among Republican partisans, Paul enjoys a narrow 22% to 20% edge over Romney, with Perry (15%), Gingrich (15%), and Michele Bachmann (11%) close behind.

The Iowa State Poll paints a similar picture.  Paul garners a clear majority of the vote among those under the age of 45.  However, Newt Gingrich has the lead among older voters.  It’s worth noting that the Iowa State Poll did two things that are different from most other polls.  They used a very long field period, starting their interviews on December 8, when Gingrich’s popularity was still at its height. They also used a panel sample – in other words, they re-interviewed a subset of the voters they spoke to in their November poll.  It’s unclear what impact the use of a panel has on their results, but the extended field period certainly does not capture the exceptional fluidity of this race.

I think that these polls may be inflating Paul’s support because they over-represent a segment of the electorate that is less likely to turn out.  Keep in mind that the caucuses are a long process.  You have to listen to hours of speeches from representatives of each candidate before you get to cast your vote.  And you have to do this on a cold Iowa workday.

Who’s more likely to show up under those conditions – younger, independent-minded voters or older, partisan stalwarts?  Exactly.  Now, this runs counter to what some other astute observers have opined.

I'm not saying there won’t be young voters at the caucuses.  It just won’t be as many as the polls suggest.  According to the 2008 Iowa exit polls (or technically “entrance” polls), 27% of GOP attendees were under the age of 45.  The Insider Advantage poll has this group at 40% of the electorate and Iowa State has them at 37%.  An October Des Moines Register poll noted that seniors are less likely to self-report intended caucus attendance than they have been in past years.  While I accept that, I'm not sure if young independents will be as motivated to come out as the more recent polls suggest (young conservatives may be a different story). 

The real issue here is partisan identity.  In the 2008 exit polls, 13% of GOP caucus goers identified themselves as “independent.”  However, voters of this affiliation make up 30% of the Insider Advantage sample and 38% of the Iowa State sample.  Even without a contested Democratic caucus to draw away some independents (as can be argued happened in 2008), there is no way that independents will make up anywhere near that proportion on January 3^rd.

In the end, I predict – and here’s where I go out on a limb – that Mitt Romney will win Iowa with about 27% of the vote.  Ron Paul will come in a close second, but since many polls show him with a lead, he will be seen as having underperformed.  I also think the third place finisher will be Michele Bachmann (perhaps due to an influx of young conservatives).  She will not be far ahead of Gingrich and Perry in total votes, but her “surprise” showing will be the story of the caucus.

So with the media focused on Romney’s win (“Is he invincible?”) and Bachman’s better than expected performance, Ron Paul’s strong effort will likely get squeezed out of the media coverage.  And that’s what really matters as attention turns to New Hampshire and the South.

NJ Congressional Redistricting Speculation

So here we go again.  Another New Jersey redistricting commission will sequester itself in New Brunswick’s Heldrich Hotel.  This time, Congress is up for grabs.  What will happen?  Who knows?  But we can speculate.

The outcome of Congressional redistricting is much harder to predict than this year’s legislative process.  For one, the New Jersey Constitution has a number of standards that limit how the legislative lines can be drawn (e.g. keeping municipalities whole), whereas it offers absolutely no guidance on the Congressional map.  Also, this year’s legislative tie-breaker, Alan Rosenthal, showed his hand early in the process, laying out a series of standards that pretty much locked him into choosing the Democratic map.  The Congressional tie-breaker, John Farmer, has avoided making any public pronouncements of the standards he will use.

The process begins with the commission’s Democratic and Republican teams each presenting a map for Farmer’s consideration.  It is certain that these initial maps will show 7-5 splits, 7 districts that favor their party and 5 that favor the other party.  Surprise, surprise!

Both sides will justify their maps under the guise of partisan “fairness.”  This is the principle that the distribution of Congressional districts should match the partisan inclinations of the statewide electorate.  Of course, this also means is that none of the districts should be competitive (which is basically what happened during the 2001 process).

In other words, the Democrats will argue that the state leans more Democratic, so they should have more districts.  The Republicans will do the same for their side.  Regardless of whose analysis is wrong or right, the fairness doctrine as a primary consideration lacks merit, because frankly it matters very little to New Jersey’s influence in Congress.  How exactly does it help the state if one extra Representative (out of 435 total) belongs to one party or the other?

Indeed, it could be argued that a 6-6 split actually gives our state its best chance at having influence.  Given the number of times control of the House has changed hands over the past few years, always having 6 members in the majority actually increases our chances of placing members high on the Congressional power list.

At any rate, Dean Farmer has indicated that he may be unwilling to entertain the fairness argument as an opening salvo.  He has publicly stated that the bulk of New Jersey voters are independent.  To be clear, this shows a misunderstanding of New Jersey’s electorate and how our lack of electoral competition discourages partisan voter registration.   However, I agree with what appears to be the underlying reason he has made these comments – the “fairness” doctrine simply should not be the primary consideration when redrawing New Jersey’s Congressional districts.

I have already laid out my general views on the matter, both in print and in testimony to the Commission.  New Jersey as a state has one of the least compact (i.e. most gerrymandered) Congressional maps.  In fact, New Jersey’s 6^th District is considered one of the top ten offenders in the country.  Until we fix this lack of compactness and the consequent splitting of communities of interest, the people in each district will lack effective representation, regardless of “partisan fairness.”

For the sake of the state as a whole, I would like to see a map that does the following (these are general guidelines): 

Move District 1 slightly south to pick up more of Gloucester County and swing District 2 a little north to take in the parts of southern Ocean County that are in the Philadelphia media market.

Make District 3 primarily Burlington with bits of western Camden and southern Mercer so that it is almost entirely in the Philly media market.

Slide District 4 east so that it is a northern Ocean/eastern Monmouth district.

Consolidate District 6 into mostly northwest Monmouth and Middlesex.

Consolidate District 12 into Mercer and southern Middlesex/Somerset.

Make District 7 mainly a Hunterdon/Warren/Sussex district and expand District 11 north.

Expand District 10 into Union and make District 13 more contiguous by adding a little more of Hudson, Elizabeth and Newark.

Expand District 8 east, which basically means that the northern part of District 9 and the eastern part of District 5 would be combined.

I think these general guidelines would go a long way to increasing the representativeness and responsiveness of our Congressional delegation.

Now, I certainly don’t know whether any of this is in line with Farmer’s thinking.  A cloak of secrecy has been maintained over the entire process.  But from his few public statements, I think it is unlikely that Farmer will approve a map that give either side an easy majority in the delegation.  Furthermore, I think his preference for reducing New Jersey’s delegation from 13 to the required 12 will be to force a Democrat v. Republican “fair fight” rather than an intraparty face-off.  Finally, I think he will seek a map that reduces the likelihood that any of the state’s most influential members from either party will be significantly threatened.

To start with, Donald Payne (D-10) is safe under the Voting Rights Act – you can’t break up a district where a minority group comprises a majority of the voting age population.  Albio Sires (D-13) is also safe.  While his seat does not technically meet the threshold of being majority-Hispanic in voting age population, it is in total population.  It would be politically untenable to alter his district significantly.

The southern seats (Districts 1 through 4) are also safe, because they all have to march north.  It should be noted, though, that under my preferred scenario above, Jon Runyan (R-3) could find himself in a more competitive district.

Farmer is unlikely to be amenable to a map that significantly harms Frank Pallone (D-6) or Rush Holt (D-12) because they are likely to have influence in leadership if the Democrats regain control of the House in the near future. 

On the Republican side, influence is less clear.  Chris Smith (R-4) is the most senior member of New Jersey’s delegation, although he has had some conflicts with his leadership.  Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-11) also has longevity (both personally and in his family’s roots to the earliest governance of the American Republic) – so while he may not be the most influential member he is likely safe. 

Leonard Lance (R-7) is a relative newcomer, serving only his second term.  While this may make him vulnerable in terms of seniority, he is seen as having potential for future leadership in his party.  Furthermore, putting him at risk would mean pitting him against Holt or Pallone (see above).  So Lance is likely safe.

This leaves Scott Garrett (R-5), Bill Pascrell (D-8) and Steve Rothman (D-9).  Garrett was first elected in 2002 and is a darling of the Tea Party wing of his party.  This means he has no allies at the table in the redistricting process.

Pascrell and Rothman were first elected in 1996.  That actually gives them slightly more seniority than Rush Holt.  However, neither appears to have the same level of influence that Holt does.  Rothman did garner attention by being the first major Garden State politico to back Barack Obama in 2008, but this doesn’t seem to have paid any influence dividends.  My sense is that Pascrell may have more friends at the table than Rothman does.

Therefore, I see a mash-up of districts 5 and 9 as the most likely outcome of this process (although it’s hard to say right now if that would end up being a lean-Democrat or lean-Republican district).

Of course, I could be wrong.  But we won’t know that until white smoke emerges from the Heldrich.  In the meantime, all we can do is speculate.

Is Gingrich the Phoenix?

The latest Rasmussen poll has Newt Gingrich with a 21 point lead over Mitt Romney among Republican voters.  How did this happen?

Well, a few caveats.  First, there is no such “lead,” because there is no such thing as a national primary in which these candidates are competing.  At this stage of the game, the only polls that tell us anything at all about the race are those in Iowa and New Hampshire, and to a lesser extent, South Carolina, Florida, and Nevada.  Once the early contests winnow down the field, the preferences of the national “electorate” shift toward the leading contenders.  Although, I should note that Gingrich is ahead in recent polls from all of those states except New Hampshire (and Nevada where there have been no reputable polls).

Secondly, the Rasmussen poll results tend to swing much more widely on the “flavor of the month” candidate than other polls have.  So, I’m not sure that Gingrich is quite at 38% to Romney’s 17%.  But it does make a great headline, doesn’t it?

My examination of the GOP nomination preference polls over the past six months indicates that each candidate has a base of support.  For most – Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, and Gingrich – support levels consistently register between 5% and 10%.  For Romney, it hovers around 20%. 

According to the RealClearPolitics.com polling average, Romney’s support over the past six months has ranged from 17% to 25%.  Bachman’s support went as high as 14% in mid-July before tailing off.  Perry then zoomed over the 30% mark for a short time in mid-September before plummeting.  Then Cain reached a poll average of 26% in mid-October and held it for a couple of weeks before scandal caught up with him.  Now we see Gingrich averaging 27% nationally.

My rough read of these polls is that about 20% of the Republican electorate just can’t settle on a candidate.  [In the Rasmussen polls, it looks more like 30%.  I’m not sure why his sample has more of these fickle voters, but it certainly makes for more interesting results.]

The bottom line is that each of the prior “surging” candidates had a five or six week period where their numbers were ticking up, before topping off and dropping.  Newt’s numbers started to climb four weeks ago.  So the question for Newt Gingrich is whether he will peak too early (i.e. will his numbers start dropping by mid-month) or whether his rise is timed just right for a strong showing in Iowa on January 3^rd.

Regardless, considering how the former House Speaker’s political obituary was written just a few months ago, his ascendance into the leading spot is shocking.  It’s even more astonishing, because he accomplished this while focusing his campaign strategy almost entirely on attacking the media, including his fellow travelers on Fox and syndicated radio.

I have to admit there’s something about his biting-the-hand-that-feeds-you approach that I admire.  It has made the press apoplectic.  “He’s using attacks on us to avoid answering substantive questions,” they say.  They’re right, of course, but what they miss is that Newt also has a point.  His criticism of how the press focuses on process over policy is generally on the mark.  And that brings us to where the GOP nomination battle stands today.

I recently did a radio interview about the polls on America Now with Andy Dean.  Dean used the analogy of college football bowl invitations to describe how Gingrich is overtaking Cain.  Basically, you have two teams with an 11 and 1 record.  One team has some quality wins but suffered one loss late in the season.  The other team had a horrible, embarrassing loss early on, but has managed to scrape out quiet wins for the remainder of the season.  Which team gets invited to the major bowl?  [I would have actually used the NCAA hoops Big Dance at-large bids, but you get the picture.]

It can be argued that Gingrich’s “sins” - both personal and political – are substantively more egregious than Cain’s.  However, since the Cain revelations are new and Gingrich’s have been known for some time, Gingrich is able to use Cain’s downfall to his advantage.

Can you spot the irony in all this?  Newt’s recent success can at least partially – if not mostly – be attributed to the “mainstream media” he has railed against.  The relevance of the Cain stories for Republican voters is largely because of how they are being highlighted in the press.  In media terms, the Cain story is sexy (excuse the pun) whereas the Gingrich story is old news.  The media have moved on because it no longer has the titillation factor (apologies again).

So if Newt can perform the unthinkable and wrest the nomination from Mitt he may have to send out thank-you notes to all those members of the press he blasted along the way.

Of course, there’s still a month to go before the first caucus.  That’s more than enough time for another Gingrich transgression to make its way into the mainstream media and scupper his chances.

The Expectations Game

Cross-posted at PolitickerNJ

Election Day is tomorrow.  And as is typical of these low turnout affairs, it’s now a matter of managing expectations.  Over the past few months, the New Jersey GOP has been putting out mixed messages about what they hope to accomplish in this election.  Let’s put these expectations in context.

When the new legislative map was first unveiled in April, it was clear that neither party could launch a “referendum” type campaign.  The map locked down too many districts for one party or the other.  The Republicans saw a few opportunities to pick up seats and claimed they would try to make lemonade out of what were very sour lemons.

Over the summer, the GOP leaked some internal polling “data” showing that Gov. Christie was very popular in key battleground districts while Pres. Obama was very unpopular there.  The underlying message was that, even if they couldn’t turn the election into a statewide referendum, they could do it district by district.

As anyone who closely studies voting behavior understands, the electorate doesn’t cast their vote as proxies for other offices.  It’s extremely rare that a sizable number of votes for legislator are cast specifically to show support for or opposition to a sitting governor’s agenda.  And they never think about the president; voters are smart enough to distinguish between DC and Trenton.

Certainly, voters’ opinion of the governor comes into play, but that is part and parcel of their general partisan inclination.  Unless a governor’s actions cause voters to change their normal voting choice or come out to vote when they typically wouldn’t, there is no referendum.

New Jersey’s 1991 was one such exception.  But it’s important to remember that voters were also specifically punishing the legislators who supported Gov. Florio’s tax hikes as much as they were expressing anger at the governor himself.  And that election featured a new legislative map friendlier to Republicans, to boot.

So, by the end of summer, Gov. Christie was saying that there was no way much was going to change due to the new legislative map.  Then a few weeks ago, he suddenly said that the GOP would make history!

It turns out the governor’s definition of history is a bit underwhelming.  Basically, if Republicans could hold on to the seats they already have, the election would be historic.  To back this up, the state GOP put out a memo showing that the governor’s party has lost legislative seats in the first midterm elections of 7 of the past 8 governors.

Putting aside numerous mathematical errors in the memo, the state GOP doesn’t take into account the fact that the governor’s party usually picks up seats as a coattail effect during the governor’s initial election. In this context, a loss of seats in the midterm can be viewed as something of a course correction.

Analyzing these two-cycle changes in legislative seats (governor’s election year plus midterm), we find that 4 of the past 7 governors have actually seen their party experience a net gain of seats.

Let’s go back to Gov. William Cahill, the first governor elected under the current legislative structure of 120 seats.  His fellow Republicans gained one seat during his election in 1969, but lost 26 seats in the 1971 midterm – for a net loss of 25 seats.

Gov. Brendan Byrne’s Democrats picked up an astronomical 39 seats when he was first elected in 1973.  This was on top of the 26 they picked up in the prior election, so it’s not surprising that Democrats wouldn’t be able to hold all these gains.  They lost 17 seats in the 1975 midterm, but that still left the legislature with 22 more Democrats than it had before Byrne was first elected.  Democrats picked up another 3 seats during Byrne’s re-election but lost 10 in his second midterm.  In the end, Byrne left office with his party holding 15 more legislative seats than it did before he was elected.

The 1981 election brought New Jersey a new legislative map and a record close race for governor.  Tom Kean eked out a 1,600 vote win and his fellow Republicans picked up 6 seats in the legislature under a brand new map.  They picked up one more seat in an ensuing special election but lost 3 in Kean’s first midterm.  This netted the Republicans a 4 seat gain compared to where they stood before Kean was elected.  Kean’s party picked up 12 seats and control of the Assembly during his landslide 1985 re-election, but lost 6 seats during his second mid-term election.  Kean ended his tenure as governor with 9 more Republican seats than before he was elected.  [Note: the initial version of this column included incorrect numbers for Kean's second term.]

Jim Florio, the man Kean beat, came to office in 1989 with 4 additional Democratic seats.  His party lost one seat in an interim special election and another 31 in the midterm on the back of voter anger over tax hikes, for a net loss of 28 seats during his term.

Christie Whitman is the only governor of the past 40 years who never saw her party gain seats.  She governed under a legislative map that slightly favored Republicans, but not by nearly the number that the GOP picked up in the anti-Florio backlash.  Her party lost 8 seats when she was first elected in 1993, one seat in an interim election, another 2 in her first midterm, 2 during her re-election, 3 during her final midterm, and another one in a special election.  Republicans maintained their legislative majority throughout the 1990s, but by 16 fewer seats than they had before Whitman was elected.

A new legislative map in 2001 helped Jim McGreevey come into office with a net gain of 14 Democratic legislators.  However, rather than lose some of those gains in a midterm correction, Democrats were able to pick up 5 more seats in 2003.  This gave McGreevey’s party a net 19 seat gain during his abbreviated tenure.

Democrats picked up another 2 seats when Jon Corzine was elected in 2005 and held even during his 2007 midterm.  This is the smallest net legislative change of any governor’s administration, but it is a gain nonetheless.

That brings us to Chris Christie.  His Republicans were able to pick up one Assembly seat when he was first elected in 2009, but lost one Senate seat in a special election last year.  So he’s at “square one” regarding tomorrow’s election.

Looking back on the past 40 years, neither a gain nor a loss of Republican seats would be particularly historic.  Both outcomes have happened about equally, although more governors have in fact gained rather than lost seats if both their initial election and midterm years are combined.

On the other hand, if Republicans can hold onto the 49 seats they have now, it would indeed be historic.  Chris Christie would be the first governor since the legislature went to 120 seats to experience neither a net gain nor a net loss in the two-cycle number of seats his party controls.  And given the current legislative map’s limitations, I bet that’s exactly the type of history he’s shooting for.

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Bizarre fact:  Eleven legislative candidates nominated by either Democratic or Republican primary voters will not appear on the ballot tomorrow.  An astounding four of those are from the 8^th district.  Democrat Carl Lewis was kicked off the Senate ballot.  His two Assembly running mates were placeholders and subsequently substituted on the ballot.  And incumbent Patrick Delany resigned his seat over the summer and was replaced.  That means that 8^th district voters will only see two names on the ballot out of the six candidates they nominated in June.

New Jersey Legislative Forecast

Cross-posted at PolitickerNJ

New Jersey goes to the polls seven days from now. 

Well, actually very few New Jerseyans will go to the polls seven days from now.  Statewide registered voter turnout will fall below 30% for the first time since records have been kept.  So many seats are considered a lock that many incumbents won’t even demonstrate a minimal level of respect for voters by answering the media’s candidate questionnaires.

Considering how irrelevant voters are to the process I have decided to save us all the effort and announce the winning margins for all 120 legislative seats a week ahead of the election.

But seriously folks…  The following is an analysis of where the races stand based on prior voting patterns and developments during this fall’s campaign.  It is very similar to the town-based district partisan advantage I published shortly after the new legislative map was announced in April.

On the Senate side, 15 seats will likely be won by more than 30 point margins (10 Democrat and 5 Republican).  Look for the Hudson County seats to top 60 point margins.  Another 9 seats (2D/7R) will be won by 21 to 30 point margins; 11 districts (8D/3R) by 13 to 20 point margins, and 2 districts (1D/1R) by 8 to 12 point margins.  The remaining 3 seats should be won by Dems in 2 to 7 point margins.  [See below for specific district breakdowns.]

For the Assembly calculation, I added the total votes for each party’s candidates to determine the margin.  This does not take into account potential differences in votes for individual candidates of the same party.  While some individual victories may be close, I am not forecasting any split party Assembly delegations.

On the Assembly side, 12 districts (9 Democrat and 3 Republican) will be won more than 30 point margins.  Another 9 districts (1D/8R) will be won by 21 to 30 point margins; 8 districts (6D/2R) by 13 to 20 point margins, and 6 districts (4D/2R) by 8 to 12 point margins.  Democrats should win another 4 districts by 2 to 7 points and Republicans one district by the same margin. [See below for specific district breakdowns.]

As such, I see the Senate staying steady at a 24 to 16 Democrat edge, and the Democrats picking up one seat in the Assembly for a 48 to 32 seat advantage,

This forecast is based largely on past behavior and the incumbent protection constraints of the current legislative map.  As last weekend’s snowstorm proves, all forecasts should be taken with a huge grain of salt.  However, the extent to which actual results vary from this forecast will determine bragging rights on November 8.

A few districts bear special discussion.

District 38:  Defending Senator Bob Gordon, and his Assembly running mates, has been priority #1 for state Democrats.  If you’ve been hearing New Jersey Democratic operatives use the term “Tea Party” with Rainman-like redundancy, this district is the reason why.  Their strategy is to paint the GOP nominee, Bergen Freeholder John Driscoll, as out of the moderate mainstream.  This is one place where Gov. Christie has lent his presence on the campaign trail in order to counteract those charges.

The new legislative map dealt a real blow to the incumbents, slicing off half their existing voter base in the redistricting shuffle.  The 8 lost towns accounted for more than two-thirds of the Democrats’ plurality in recent elections and remained solidly Democratic during Chris Christie’s 2009 victory.  At the same time, the core towns left in the 38^th saw their Democratic margin cut in half from 2007.  The district’s new towns gained from the 35^th (Glen Rock and Hawthorne) and the 39^th (Oradell, River Edge and New Milford) also voted much more Republican in the 2009 legislative races than they did in 2007.  New towns from the 37^th district (Bergenfield, Maywood, Rochelle Park) remained firmly Democratic, although it’s important to note that their state senator was running for Lieutenant Governor at the time.  Bottom line: without Chris Christie at the top of the ticket to drive GOP turnout, the Democrats should be able to hold onto all three seats here.

District 2:  Republicans currently hold the Assembly seats, but the real battle is at the top of the ticket.  GOP Assemblyman Vince Polistina is hoping to knock off incumbent Democratic Senator Jim Whelan.  Democrats have a 9,000 voter registration edge here, but as past history has shown, this is not enough to ensure a D victory.  Whelan’s prospects improved when Atlantic City mayor Lorenzo Langford ended his independent bid for the seat.  Atlantic City returns accounted for about 40% of Whelan’s plurality in 2007.

The new legislative map cost this district 5 towns, with Galloway being the big prize.  While Whelan won those towns in 2007, they voted heavily for the GOP Assembly in recent years.  The towns added to this district (Buena, Buena Vista, Folsom, and Somers Point) are friendlier territory for Democrats.  This has been a pretty muddy fight, with Whelan and Polistina accusing each other of feeding at the public trough.  When races become this dirty, the attacks tend to cancel out and the status quo is maintained.  Whelan will hold on to his Senate seat and the GOP will retain the Assembly here.

District 14: It’s probably a historic relic to keep this district in the “competitive” category.  Voters in this district – which includes a sizable number of state government workers – are used to retail politics.  Former GOP legislator Bill Baroni was a master of the meet-and-greet approach and handily won what should have been a solidly Democratic district throughout the past decade.  The current Senate incumbent Linda Greenstein learned this lesson well and has spent years shaking hands to become Baroni’s successor, first in the Assembly and now in the Senate.

The GOP selected Richard Kanka, a man with some name recognition, to challenge Greenstein and have put some resources into this race.  But the fact that Robbinsville Mayor Dave Fried pulled out of the Assembly race this summer is a signal that they have lowered their expectations.  Republicans were counting on a big turnout from Fried’s hometown, which the new map added to this district along with East Windsor, Hightstown and Spotswood.  These new towns replaced South Brunswick and West Windsor, the former having been a major stronghold for Greenstein, especially when she won the 2010 special election for this seat by more than 7 points.  This town shift made the district look more competitive on paper, but East Windsor and Robbinsville came from ultra-safe Republican districts where Democratic was depressed.  I would expect that more “D” voters will now turn out in these towns and the Democratic slate will win by a margin close to the upper end of the 2 to 7 point range forecast.

District 7:  Republican Diane Allen has held on to the Senate seat in what has been a Democratic district by force of her own popularity.  The Democrats have consistently won the Assembly seats.  Redistricting has led Republicans to believe they may have an outside shot at finally picking up an Assembly seat here.

This district lost Merchantville, Maple Shade, Westampton, and Mount Holly in the new map.  But the big blow to Democrats was the loss of Pennsauken, which not only cost them voters but an incumbent Assemblyman to boot.  These towns were replaced by five municipalities from solidly Republican districts: Bordentown City and Township, Fieldsboro, Moorestown, and Mount Laurel.  This town shift moved what was a 5,000 vote plurality for the Democrats in 2007 to a hypothetical 1,000 vote edge.  However, since the new towns were in uncompetitive districts, we would expect the South Jersey Democratic GOTV machine now to be hard at work in these new towns.  Expect the Assembly Democrats to get about a 5 point win here, while Diane Allen cruises to a near 20 point victory.

District 1: Everything about this district says it should be solidly Republican.  And yet, Democrat Jeff Van Drew has been a winner here for the last few election cycles.  Even when he wasn’t on the ballot in 2009, District 1 voters were urged to vote for the “Van Drew Team.”  And they did.

The new legislative map actually handed this district some more Democrat-friendly towns in Cumberland County.  I expect that all three Democratic incumbents will be returned to office on Tuesday.  I included this district here though, because I think the results may be closer than expected, specifically on the Assembly side.  Usually in New Jersey legislative elections, the two members of a party’s Assembly slate get roughly the same number of votes.  One recent poll indicated that Matt Milam is running behind fellow incumbent Nelson Albano.  Couple this with the fact that the (fairly) new Cape May County GOP chairman is itching to score a victory, and it could be an interesting night in the southern end of the state.

It’s also worth keeping an eye on Districts 11 and 16.  These are considered to be safe Republican districts but they were radically redrawn in the new map so that a sizable chunk of voters are unfamiliar with the incumbents.  The Democrats are hoping to make a statement here by challenging for at least one of the Assembly seats in each district.

One of the Democratic candidates in District 11 was endorsed by the Asbury Park Press in one of the few places where a newspaper endorsement carries some weight.  It’s also one of the few districts in the state where challengers have raised more than $100,000.

District 16 used to be an almost entirely Somerset County district.  With the new legislative map, the majority of its residents now come from towns in Hunterdon, Mercer, and Middlesex counties.  Still, the Republican Party stuck with its two Somerset-based incumbents and named a Somerset freeholder for the open seat.  On the Democratic slate is a South Brunswick councilman (see District 14 above), a Hunterdon teacher, and a Somerset attorney.  They have also hit the $100,000 mark in fundraising.

And in the interest of fairness, I should mention the other district where a challenger slate reported at least $100,000 raised in their 29 day finance reports.  That would be District 27.  The GOP had hoped to challenge here but their preferred nominee was knocked off by a Tea Party backed candidate in the primary. It would add some swagger to Republicans if they could knock off Dick Codey.  But this is Dick Codey we’re talking about.  In other words, Fuhgeddaboudit!

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Senate Forecast by District
D >30 points:  19, 20, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37
D 21-30 points:  5, 18
D 13-20 points:  3, 4, 6, 15, 17, 22, 27, 36
D 8-12 points:  1
D 2-7 points:  2, 14, 38
R >30 points:  8, 10, 23, 24, 30
R 21-30 points:  9, 13, 21, 25, 26, 39, 40
R 13-20 points:  7, 12, 16
R 8-12 points:  11

Assembly Forecast by District
D >30 points:  20, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37
D 21-30 points:  5
D 13-20 points: 6, 15, 17, 18, 19, 36
D 8-12 points:  3, 4, 22, 27
D 2-7 points:  1, 7, 14, 38
R >30 points:  10, 24, 30
R 21-30 points:  8, 9, 21, 23, 25, 26, 39, 40
R 13-20 points:  12, 13
R 8-12 points:  11, 16
R 2-7 points:  2