By Matt Rooney
_
In case you missed it, Save Jerseyans, there was a polling report out in early October from Fairleigh Dickinson (click here) showing a 15-point Biden lead in New Jersey. Impressive? Sure, but winning New Jersey is sadly not much of an accomplishment for Democrat presidential candidates; the last Republican to carry the state was George H. W. Bush in 1988 (when yours truly was 4 years old). 15-points par for the course for how Republicans peforem here; Romney lost N.J. by about 18-points in 2012. Trump lost by a bit more than 14-points in 2016.
Now we have another poll out suggesting that President Trump might not hemorrhaging support as is being widely forecast and reported.
–
A word of caution: Stockton University’s polling track record is piss poor. In 2019, Stockton pushed a poll showing Republican Mike Testa Jr. losing his LD1 state senate challenge by 14-points. Mike went on to win by 7-points. The primary culprit: the pollster used a BETTER than 2018 turnout model from Democrats
With all of that on the record, Stockton’s latest results are interesting on two levels.
First, Stockton shows Trump trailing 20-points among N.J. “likely” voters, nearly 50 points among those who have already voted, but just 13-points among those still planning to cast a ballot. “With more Democrats voting early than Republicans, the eventual election result will likely to be closer to the 13-point spread,” said John Froonjian, the polling director at Stockton. So once again… if Trump was truly on the verge of a historic suburban wipeout, we’d expect to see a 20+ point loss in New Jersey, not a loss “closer to the 13-point spread.”
Secondly and most importantly, the South Jersey results are worth exploring. Arguably the GOP’s best pick-up opportunity this year is NJ-03, district which voted for Trump in 2016 but which narrowly elected a Democrats to Congress in 2018. David Richter is the Republican nominee there. The GOP is also working overtime to defend Democrat defector Jeff Van Drew in NJ-02 from a well-financed member of the extended Kennedy clan.
Stockton says Trump is statistically tied with Biden in “South Jersey” (defined as Atlantic, Burlington, Camden, Cape May, Cumberland, Gloucester, Ocean and Salem counties), 47%-45%. The pair is also tied on the favorability front in South Jerse at 47% a piece. Keep in mind: populous and DEEP BLUE Camden is in NJ-01 and, if it’s removed from the poll, would probably result in a Trump lead. We don’t know for sure because the report didn’t include tables/cross tabs but it’s a reasonable assumption.
That’s potentially tremendous news for Richter and Van Drew. Both men need Trump to win to prevail. If Trump is down only 2-points with Camden County in the mix (where he lost by over 30-point in 2016)? Trump is ahead in NJ-02 and NJ-03 at the moment.
I’m not here to fill you with false hope, folks. No one knows who’s “showing up” this year. Trump’s coalition is hard to poll and this COVID-19/remote ballot nonsense is a major further complication. I’m simply pointing out that there is plenty of empirical evidence that, IF Republicans/Trump supporters vote, 2020 may not end half as poorly for the good guys as is being advertised by the Media.
–
