Gov. Christie Poll Rating Differences

Cross-posted at PolitickerNJ

There have been a couple of queries about Gov. Christie’s poll ratings released by Monmouth University/NJ Press Media this week compared to the numbers put out by Quinnipiac University last week.  Among registered voters, Monmouth has the governor’s positive job rating at 50% while Quinnipiac put it at 59%.

Each organization’s prior polls put the governor’s approval at 55%.  In other words, Quinnipiac zigged (up 4 points) while Monmouth zagged (down 5 points).  Why?

There have been 17 occasions over the past six years where Monmouth and Quinnipiac released New Jersey governor ratings within two weeks of one another.  These most recent results mark the largest ever difference between the two.

Since Chris Christie took office, the two organizations released three polls prior to today that were conducted within two weeks of one another.  In each of those instances, the governor’s job approval rating differed by exactly 3 points – in two instances the Quinnipiac number was higher, while it was lower in the other.

It’s worth taking a dive into the two polls’ demographics to see if anything there accounts for the difference.  Overall, the polls have very similar racial compositions, but Monmouth includes more cell phone interviews (19% compared to 12.5% for Quinnipiac).  This probably leads to a somewhat younger voter group for Monmouth.  In our most recent poll, 24% of the voter sample was under the age of 30.  Quinnipiac did not release their age demographics, but past polls hovered between 18% and 20%.  Younger voters tend to be more Democratic in their political leaning, so this could have an impact.

In fact, there are notable differences in the partisan composition of the two samples.  Monmouth’s poll puts self-identified Democrats at 37% and Republicans at 23% – a 14 point difference.  Quinnipiac’s sample is 34% Democratic and 25% Republican – a smaller 9 point gap.

Over the last 9 months, Quinnipiac released 6 New Jersey polls and Monmouth released 4.  The Democratic advantage in Quinnipiac’s sample ranged from 6 to 12 points during that time.  Monmouth’s Democratic edge was larger, but more stable at 13 to 14 points. New Jersey’s voter rolls puts the registered partisan split at 33% Democratic to 20% Republican – a 13 point gap.

During the past few months, Monmouth’s voter sample ranged from 34% to 37% Democratic and 20% to 23% Republican.  Quinnipiac’s polls ranged from 32% to 35% Democratic and 23% to 27% Republican.  That means Monmouth’s sample tends to be 1 to 4 points more Democratic and a similar 0 to 3 points more Republican than the official voter rolls.  Quinnipiac’s partisan sample tends to range near the Democratic registration numbers – from 1 point below to 2 points above – but is consistently 3 to 7 points higher in its Republican share of registered voters.

All this explains why Quinnpiac’s gubernatorial ratings have been more “Republican” than Monmouth’s in 7 of the last 8 polls conducted in close proximity of one another.  However, it doesn’t explain why the job ratings diverged so much in their recent poll releases.

So, we turn our attention to another culprit: the questionnaire. Both Monmouth and Quinnipiac use consistent question wording when rating the governor.  Monmouth also makes sure the question appears in exactly the same spot on the questionnaire each time we conduct a non-election poll – for the record, that would be question number 2, after a general evaluation of the state of New Jersey.

Quinnipiac, on the other hand plays around with the order in which they ask the governor’s job rating question.  In 8 polls over the past year, they asked Gov. Christie’s job rating as the first question in 3 cases and the 3^rd question in one case.  For the remaining four polls, the governor’s rating question was slotted from #10 and #13 in their questionnaire.

When it was the first question, the governor’s positive job rating was only 44% to 47%.  At the number 3 slot, it was 53%.  At #10 or later in the interview, it ranged from 55% to 59%.  It's worth noting that the lower poll numbers came early last year, and were either closer to or even lower than other polls conducted at that time.  Hmmm.

In the most recent Quinnipiac poll, one of the questions preceding Gov. Christie’s rating presented him as a potential nominee for Vice President.  In other words, the survey framed the governor as a national figure before asking voters to rate his job performance.  Could this be why his rating among Republican voters in particular shot up to an astronomical 92%?

Pollsters know that job approval ratings can be impacted by the context of a poll interview.  That’s why most pollsters try to place these key trend questions in the same place in every questionnaire.  This increases our confidence that any changes in a politician’s ratings are due to real shifts in opinion and not an artifact of questionnaire inconsistencies.

I’m willing to venture that first naming Chris Christie as Mitt Romney’s potential running mate before asking New Jerseyans to rate their governor might have had a wee bit to do with the two polls’ divergent trends.

Other theories are most welcome.

Has New Jersey’s Gender Gap Really Closed?

Cross-posted at PolitickerNJ

An article in the Star-Ledger today reports on a poll that gives President Barack Obama and Governor Chris Christie the same job approval rating among New Jersey women. This would be big news if true. But I’m not so sure I buy it.

The poll, only conducted among New Jersey women voters, reports that 59% approve of Obama and 57% approve of Christie. The article claims, “The poll confirms a recent trend for Christie who has, for months, been closing the gender gap. In October, a Monmouth University/NJ Press Media poll found women approved of the governor 53 percent to 40 percent.”

One problem with that statement is that since today's poll only surveyed women, there is no way to assess whether there is a gender gap in the current data.

But a much bigger problem with that statement is that it is patently false – the result of selective, or just plain bad, research on the part of this reporter. Yes, the gender gap was closing in October, but it has since opened up again, as the more recent Monmouth poll in February showed.

In fact, every New Jersey poll released since last month showed a significant gender gap for both Governor Christie and President Obama.

Three recent Garden State polls conducted by Monmouth, Quinnipiac, and FDU show President Obama’s marginal approval rating at 54% to 58% among female voters in New Jersey. This is similar to the 59% result in the poll reported today. However, those same three polls set Governor Christie’s approval rating among women at 46% to 50%, lower than the 57% in today’s poll.

	Christie		Obama
Poll	Men	Women	Men	Women
Monmouth 2/7*
Approve	59	50	46	56
Disapprove	32	40	47	38
Net	+23	+10	-1	+18
Quinnipiac 2/29
Approve	62	49	46	54
Disapprove	32	44	50	41
Net	+30	+5	-4	+13
FDU 3/13
Approve	62	46	43	58
Disapprove	27	40	49	34
Net	+35	+6	-6	+24

* The Monmouth University Poll releases provide gender breakdowns for all residents. The numbers in this table are for registered voters, to be comparable with the other polls.

For background, among all New Jersey voters, all three polls found Governor Christie had higher net job approval ratings than President Obama – between +17 and +20 for Christie and between +6 and +9 for Obama.

On the gender gap, all three polls showed Christie with a whopping positive net rating among male voters – from +23 to +35 – and a smaller net positive rating among women – from +5 to +10. For Obama, his rating among male voters was in negative territory – from -1 to -6 – while  it was decidedly positive among women – from +13 to +24.

And the trend for the three polls suggests that the gender gap for both politicians may have actually widened rather than narrowed over the past six weeks.

Today's poll was conducted for Kean University. Kean started publishing polls last year, but the methodology (sample design, weighting and analysis) is farmed out to a private polling firm. In the past, they have used a Republican polling firm to conduct their surveys. It‘s unclear whether this was true of the current poll, because the article did not report this key methodological detail.

Unlike the three polls cited in the table above, Kean does not subscribe to the National Council on Public Polls principles of disclosure. In other words, it’s impossible from their press release - which is not available online - to assess how the poll was actually conducted. [Note: I emailed the poll director for methodological information, but have not yet received a response.] Aside from the sampling and weighting issues, it’s unknown whether this poll asked the same job rating question as the other three polls.

I am a strong proponent of having a variety of sound public opinion polls covering the same populations and topics. No one poll can be comprehensive. Having a number of pollsters attack different angles of the same policy issue gives us a richer picture of the state of public opinion on that issue.

And as we have seen with election polling, having a plethora of polls enables us to calculate an aggregate projection which tends to be pretty much on target. In terms of office holder job ratings, multiple polls provide an important validity check.

In this case, that validity check does not pan out. A combination of unknown polling techniques and poor reporting has given us a tantalizing front page story line, regardless of its veracity.

Note to the media: this is a must-read from the National Council on Public Polls – 20 Questions a Journalist Should Ask About Poll Results BEFORE deciding whether to report them.

Super Tuesday Looking Good for Romney

A slew of polls were released on the eve of sorta-Super Tuesday.  It’s not quite the stellar lineup originally planned.  Texas pushed its primary back to May because of Congressional redistricting hiccups and Virginia is already in the Mitt Romney column because Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich failed to qualify for the ballot there.  Regardless, the signs point to the inevitability of a Romney nomination if he does well on March 6.

The polling aggregators at both Real Clear Politics and Huffington Post show the closely watched state of Ohio as a dead heat.   However, the trend lines clearly show Romney gaining and Santorum dropping over the past week.  And as we saw last week in Michigan, that trend was predictive of the final outcome.

Importantly, the March 6 primaries feature the two most socially conservative states to hold contests thus far.  These are states where Santorum was expected to do well, but he now clings to a 2 to 3 point lead in Tennessee.  Even in Oklahoma, his poll lead has fallen from around 20 points to 10 in the few polls conducted over the past month.

In the 2008 Republican primaries, two-thirds of voters from Tennessee and Oklahoma called themselves Evangelical Christians, among the highest concentration in the country.  Furthermore, more than 4-in-10 GOP primary voters in these two states said it mattered a great deal to them that a candidate shares their religious beliefs.

These are the voters who have been reticent to back Romney.  Forget about the exit poll analysis you have seen claiming that Romney’s weakness is strong conservatives or strong Tea Party supporters.  Those groups are important, but when you strip away the political and demographic characteristics of these groups, the one thing that differentiates their vote choice is whether they are evangelicals.

It’s the Mormon thing.  Romney’s faith may be a sticking point with Protestants, but it doesn’t really bother Catholics.  It’s little surprise that Romney has won every state where Catholics (or Catholics plus Mormons) made up at least 30% of the electorate.

Other than Massachusetts and Vermont, Ohio is the only state in the Super Tuesday lineup where the Catholic vote is expected to top 25%.  [Idaho’s caucuses should have a sizable Mormon vote.]  This looks good for Romney.

It also helps that Santorum’s appeal to blue collar voters fell short in Michigan and looks to do so again in Ohio.  And Ohio, like Tennessee, has a significant number of voters who cast their ballots early.  The Romney campaign has proven itself effective at pumping up the early vote.  In the end, I think Romney will win Ohio by about 4 or 5 points.

But that’s still not enough to get the Romney inevitability train up to speed.  It’ll be what happens in Tennessee and Oklahoma that determines whether the storyline turns to WHEN rather than IF Romney will clinch.  I think Santorum will take Tennessee by 3 or 4 points and Oklahoma by 12.  But if Romney performs well among the large group of evangelical voters who turn out – picking up at least one-third of that vote – it will be a clear sign that this hold-out group has finally started to accept the idea of Mitt Romney as their standard bearer in November.

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.