By Michael John Donohue
Polling as we know it today it is dead. And we relied on polls for guidance. In fact, the entire country relied on polls for guidance as NJ became the center of the political universe in ‘25. I asked friends from organizations that came in from outside NJ what their level of buyer’s remorse was. They all said, effectively, “zero” since they were looking at the same polling as everyone else. Granted, there were a couple of polls that had Jack down 5 or even 8, but they were outliers and none of them predicted a 13 point loss. Any one who tells you they knew we would lose by double digits is an opportunistic, Monday morning quarterback and should zip it. Weather forecasts are eminently more reliable than current polling methodology and our reliance on these polls created false hope and misplaced confidence. We need to find a better gauge of where an election stands moving forward.
Making strategic and investment decisions based on this sort of polling seems now to clearly be below the sort of reasonable standard of care for evaluating the status of a race. Over the past decade, technology allowed us to leave traditional and more verifiable polling methods behind in favor of quick and cheap alternatives. Going forward, polling will need to go “old school” in order to drill through to the right universe of voters using live callers who are unrelenting in getting 100% verifiable live respondents. Sample sizes should be larger. Pushbutton, online, algorithmic and all other forms of cheap and easy polling need to be put on the ash heap. While they are more expensive, old methods that ensure the capturing of the complete snapshot need to be resurrected if we intend to rely on polling ever again to make decisions about messaging and campaign spending.
Chaos and Economic Uncertainty. So, the Never-Trumpers are all standing on the rooftops screaming TRUMP when asked why we lost. Too simplistic. In fact, it does not appear that voters rejected the America First agenda of lower taxes, safe streets, secure borders, protection of girls in sports, protection of children in schools, law and order, etc. It doesn’t appear that voters rejected MAGA as a movement or general proposition. But the national Democrats and their mainstream media propaganda wing effectively drove a message that the country is in chaos: government shutdown and general dysfunction, cutting off food stamps, cutting Obamacare subsidies, masked paramilitary snatching non-criminal aliens off of city streets. All of these issues and more were packaged up by a Democrat establishment that essentially was put on vacation to go work on campaigns and the chaos message was reinforced by the 24/7 prostituted left wing media machine.
Economic uncertainty gripped a broad swath of the electorate that depends on government for their very survival. (More on this below.) And the government was closed for business, putting that very survival in jeopardy. Pretty strong motivator to go out and vote against the Republicans being blamed. And it worked.
Energy. As a direct result of Democrat energy policies in NJ, home electric bills went up 20%+ in the middle of a gubernatorial campaign. And voters believed that the Democrat candidate was the one who could fix it. She said she would declare an energy state of emergency and freeze utility costs. This plan was so absurd, even the current Democrat Governor publicly said it couldn’t be done. But she kept hammering away with the fantasy. Jack had a much better plan based on restructuring NJ’s approach to energy generation and distribution. With perfect hindsight, we see that we lost the issue and Sherrill offered a Democrat solution to a Democrat-created problem that while complete fantasy, captured the interest of voters. It is clear now, that trying to explain to voters that we will withdraw from RGGI and that will help with your electric bills, did not break through. The hottest issue of the cycle, a potential serious burden for the Democrats, became a positive talking point for their candidate.
Voter Registration and Food Stamps. People seem to be forgetting that there are 853,404 MORE registered Democrats in NJ than Republicans. And, there are 2,358,767 Unaffiliated voters. If a Republican splits the Unaffiliated voters, it’s a wash and the Dem registration advantage persists. Republicans have done well statewide when our voters have turned out, we have captured a large portion of Unaffiliated voters AND we have captured ten or twelve percent of Democrat voters and even more of them stayed home. In 2025, in all likelihood, we lost the Us by a damaging number. More critically, we did not get to double digits on Democrat crossovers and Democrats turned out the vote. Sherrill got 1,847,735 votes. Before we concretize the steal conspiracy theories, we should realize there are 2,526,872 registered Democrats. Overall voter turnout was about 50%. Give Sherrill 93% of 50% of registered Democrats and she gets 1,174,995 votes. Let half the Unaffiliated voters stay home and give Sherrill 54.5% of the half that voted, and she has her winning number. And this turnout in an off year election is not as unprecedented as many want to believe.
In 2001 and 2005, turnout was around 49% and it was about 47% in 2009. Granted, it’s been a while, but it happened in 2025. Unpredictable? Impossible? Far from it. So, everyone scratching their heads about where Mikie got an extra 400,000 votes, realize there were over a million Dem voters who stayed home. And over a million Unaffiliated voters who stayed home. I suck at math, and it is pretty easy for me to see where she got the votes. We got our asses kicked because in NJ (and VA and CA and PA) Democrat voters turned out in higher numbers than usual in places where they have a lot of voters. Now, the larger question is why. First, see #2 above. Second, food stamps. In NJ, 827,200 people received SNAP benefits, more commonly known as food stamps. Actually, its a form of debit card that the federal government, through the states, loads up with credit once a month. On October 31, 2025, due to the Democrat-led government shutdown, the cards didn’t get loaded and hundreds of thousands of New Jerseyans were really pissed off. I would be too if I couldn’t eat. And stories are trickling in that the Sherrill campaign sent text messages to all of those people on SNAP saying Jack and Trump had cut off their food stamps and the only way to get them back was to go vote for Sherrill, complete with a link to the address of their polling place.
We got okey-doked. The Dems kept the government shutdown long enough to get to the SNAP cutoff so they could drive as many of those 827,000 NJ food stamp recipients to the polls as possible. It would be interesting to know how many voted, but there is no way that people staring down a lack of food were not motivated to vote. And these are not nebulous fringe members of NJ society. In NJ, more than 31% of working families received SNAP benefits. And more than 64% of those families have children. Few things (see #5) could motivate someone to vote like the prospect of not having the ability to feed your kids if you don’t vote. And although the thinking is completely backwards, the blame fell squarely on Republicans.
Hate. We have watched with a high level of perplexity for over a decade as Democrat national leaders demonized and dehumanized Republicans. This picked up incredible steam with Joe Biden, especially his Nazi-esque Philadelphia night speech where he declared “MAGA Republicans” an “existential threat” to American democracy. The Dems became more and more linguistically violent leading to the near assassination of President Trump in Butler, P.A., the attempt to murder Justice Kavanaugh and ultimately a rash of radical-trans-fueled shootings, including the assassination of Charlie Kirk. What followed Charlie’s murder was a disgusting procession of Democrat national leaders justifying the killing and blaming the victim. Even the now Governor-elect of New Jersey piled on and attacked the young father who bled out as his family and friends watched, executed by the Left for defending God and the Constitution.
We understand now that this raging hatred on the Left has been carefully cultivated and stoked by Democrat leaders because hate is perhaps the strongest motivator to action that there is. The Dems have taught their voters to hate Trump and anyone who supports him. What else explains celebrating Charlie’s murder? What else explains family members shunning their brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers? What else explains thousands of NJ parents, teachers and School Board members encouraging half-dressed men done up in drag to read to their children at NJEA events and in schools? It is hatred so insidious that reason has been utterly suspended. We now have a Left wing electorate that is so imbued with their conditioned hatred of Trump and Republicans, that they overcome any pull toward rational thought. The Left has refined this ideologized hate so completely that it has overcome in many the inclination they may naturally have had to skip the vote. For them now, it is not about supporting their candidate, it is about making their hatred of Trump and Republicans palpable by going out and touching a voting machine.
Items one through four, we can address them with some fundraising, hard work and innovation. As for item five, I am unsure how we deal with that. One expert suggested that burning Red hatred in return might be the answer. I shutter at the thought of that. We are now, Republicans that is, no doubt, the only major Party of faith. God does not live on the Left. And if this is true, then reciprocal hatred cannot be the answer. Many years ago I wrote a column about advancing human freedom. People who are completely dependent on the government for their food, their housing, their transportation, their energy are not free people. They are a dependent class that the government can use levers of power to control. This was just made painfully clear by the Democrat minority in Congress, which sent a message to all of those families utilizing SNAP: Don’t forget, we can cut you off. Get out there and vote for us. Now!
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MICHAEL JOHN DONOHUE is a Jersey Shore native, former Superior Court judge, and current Chairman of the Cape May County GOP.
