Research 2000 for Daily Kos, 10/26-28, Likely Voters, MoE 4% (9/28-30 in parentheses):
Chris Christie (R) 42 (46)
Jon Corzine (D) 41 (42)
Chris Daggett (I) 14 (7)
Anyone looking for certainty regarding the outcome of next week's gubernatorial election in New Jersey will not find it here. As has been demonstrated in poll after poll, this is a contest that does not seem eager to be easily resolved.
As with virtually every other pollster, Republican Chris Christie has continued to lose ground through the month of October. What was a four-point lead for Chris Christie at the start of the month is now down to one, according to R2K.
Is there any reason to expect that Corzine will pull this off at the last, despite not being in the lead in this particular poll? Absolutely.
For one thing, while there are few undecideds in this final installment of the Daily Kos/R2K poll, those that are still undecided tend to come from pools of voters which should favor Corzine. The subgroup with the largest proportion of undecided voters are African-Americans (still 13% undecided). Corzine is already leading this group 82-4. It is somewhat hard to imagine that Corzine will not pick up the lions' share of those undecided African-American voters.
Other groups with disproportionately high undecideds are Hispanic voters (69-23 for Corzine) and "Other" ethnic groups (69-21 for Corzine). Of the age cohorts, voters aged 18-29 (where Corzine enjoys a 14-point edge) make up most of the undecideds.
In other words, Christie looks highly unlikely to snare any of these remaining undecideds, which could turn this infinitesimal lead into a narrow defeat.
Corzine's challenge, of course, is to get those folks that are still on fence, but predisposed to support him, out to vote (which undoubtedly explains President Obama's return to the state this weekend).
Also, it is worth noting that voters who are not firmly committed to a candidate might break more evenly than normal. Usually, they break to the challenger, because the incumbent is unpopular and the challenger usually is either undefined or reasonably well-liked. In this case, however, Christie is pretty darned unpopular himself (43-46). Furthermore, as the progression throughout the summer (and through multiple pollsters) has shown--the more he is known, the less he is liked.
He might not be able to count on those soft voters in the way that Christie Todd Whitman did when she upset Democratic incumbent Jim Florio in 1993.
In the name of full context, it is worth noting that there was another poll released today by the crew over at Democracy Corps. They are a bit more bullish on the incumbent, giving Governor Corzine a five point edge over Chris Christie (43-38-12). That means that three polls released this week give Corzine a lead of more than five points, while three have given Christie a lead, ranging from 1-4 points.
A coin-flip, if ever there was one.
