According to a new Rutgers-Eagleton poll, New Jersey voters are somehow both strongly in favor of two mutually exclusive concepts. Either the 912 people who took part in this survey were not paying attention to the questions at all, or they simply have no idea what the current state of politics is where they live. The poll concluded that
- 54 percent of respondents want NJ to have a democratically controlled legislature in order to act as a check on the Governor. They favor divided government. This is in comparison to just 37 percent who want to see Republicans take the legislature in 2011.
- 54 percent of respondents would like to vote for someone in 2011 who is NOT their incumbent legislator as opposed to 30 percent who would like to stick with who they have now.
So why don’t we try to reconcile these results. Maybe diving a bit deeper into the numbers would help? (spoiler: it does not help).
80 percent of respondents identified with some political party when answering the poll want to see their own party in control of the legislature next year. That number seems surprisingly low. I would challenge anyone to find a Republican or Democrat on the street and get them to say they want the other party running Trenton. One would think that it would be in the low 90 percent range. Independents, on the other hand, are split 48 percent to 38 percent in favor of the Democrats controlling with 13 percent unsure.
So which is it? Most districts in New Jersey are Democrat controlled, thats how we ended up in the mess we are in today thanks to the Democrat legislature. Either a slew of Democrat incumbents are going to need to find real jobs next year, or the legislature will stay blue and be a check (read: hinderance) on the Governor and any progress that can be made in fixing the fiscal and economic outlook for our state. So based on this information, something has to give, right? Wrong.
A more valuable question for this poll would have been something a long the lines of “Is your State Senator a Democrat or Republican?” or “What district do you live in?” or even “Do you know your legislator’s names?” I would venture a guess that well more than a majority of respondents would not know the answer to these questions. There is nothing in the poll results to suggest that these respondents were determined by Eagleton to be “likely” voters. In fact, 101 of the respondents were not even registered to vote. And to me, thats makes the results, while still contradictory and strange, completely unsurprising.
The average person who votes only in federal years or who does not vote at all is unlikely to know anyone in Trenton other than Chris Christie, and they are even less likely to know anything substantive about most of the garbage that comes out of the the current democrat legislature. Of course they think the Governor needs a partisan check, they probably think Christie has been sitting on his hands and not working to fix the economy in New Jersey when in reality, that dereliction of duty falls squarely on legislators like Steve Sweeney and Sheila Oliver.
The fact that these people are unlikely to vote anyway makes their opinions moot anyway. 54 percent of respondents can say that they intend to vote against the incumbent in their district, but if none of those people make it out to the polls then it makes no difference anyway. Plus, history tells us that the average incumbent will get well more than the 30 percent support that this poll suggests may be coming their way in 2011.
So, to the democrat readers, do not get too excited by this poll. Its a snapshot in time for sure, just like every other poll out there. However, it happens to be a snapshot of people unlikely to have an impact on the races this year, and at least 101 of whom are not even on the rolls. I realize that this year you are looking for hope, and if this makes you feel better, then by all means hold on to it. Hope is all you have when your party leaders continue to dig a political grave
